following the little god...

FIRST THERE WAS

2011-12-15T09:55:00.002-07:00

FIRST THERE WAS

a breaking of waters
like every other birth,
and pain, before the first cry.

There was a star, perhaps a supernova
spilling radiant gases into the void,
perhaps a confluence of planets.

His first words may have been Egyptian,
but the schoolboys, he among them,
circled at the Rabbi's feet, learned Torah,

knew sacrifice, and love, and loss.
He drew us in by blood, by suffering;
every one of us balancing in air, all newly blossomed and

Reborn.

New Poem

2011-10-21T12:14:00.004-06:00

The Drowning Woman

has gone under twice.
She thinks how more than two-thirds of her life
has passed, so soon, before her eyes.
Treading memories for a long time now,
she catches pieces of visions at the shoreline,
where flaxen-haired children
wave and call out to her,
rising from the sweet solid ground. Spent,
she leans toward them, willing them to stay.

The present is all deep water
pulling her farther away from that young woman
reclining on a blanket, her skin glistening with oil.
Her husband empties sand from his shoes,
while their children run
through shallow waves endlessly lapping,
lapping where the sand sparkles with seashells.
The sun is butter.
The children wave and call again before her third sinking.
The drowning woman longs to touch them,
can almost reach them with her outstretched arms.
Her legs run in place
as they have always done.

The past is breath in her mouth, opened
in despair, singing the words of
The Grateful Dead: My love for you will not
fade away, not fade away.

The future is light drifting like water,
light emptying itself on the white
beaches of the earth, on the sidewalks of cities,
at roadsides where the dying watch
from the corners of their eyes
their own ghosts rising,
crying out that love, love
will not fade away.

Joyce Ellen Davis 10/18/11

Family Pictures

2011-10-01T10:11:00.001-06:00

A chilly morning. My first taste of the day: warm Coke left on my desk last night. My little dog has trouble getting on and off the bed, so I lift her, and she kisses me. We limp together out into a new day. Sun's up, sky is blue. I see the family pictures we had taken last month when we were all together are up on the computer. I view them twice, they are good, I love seeing them! I love that these are my sons and their wives, my grandchildren, my sweet husband (who I argued with yesterday over trivial stuff, just stupid stuff). I love them all "to the end of every day's most quiet need," as Emily wrote. My whole body warms. ..."with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life...."

Fried Green Peppers

2011-10-01T10:06:00.000-06:00

Last night monstrous barrels full of lightning rolled across the sky, scattering bolts every which way, followed by buckets and buckets of rain. It's been like this every night for a week. Days are hot and blue, and the sun's fried my peppers on the vine.

Arrow of Time/Time Reversal

2011-10-01T09:59:00.001-06:00

Early this morning, sometime between the hours of 3 and 4 am, I woke up worrying. In that quiet, with the dog snoring softly in the curve at the back of my knees, and my husband's cpap machine inhaling and exhaling on the other side of the bed, I worried and worried and couldn't make my poor old brain let go of it: Newton's Second law of thermodynamics, entropy, and the Arrow of Time. What these say, as I understand it, is that all warm things will grow cold, that over time things break down, fall apart, and ultimately disappear entirely. As in the universe and everything in it.

Now, what I was worrying about was this: there is a law of Conservation of energy which says that the total amount of energy in a system remains constant over time, and that energy can neither be created or destroyed, but only changed from one state to another. Even in the process of Annihilation particles are not actually annihilated, but are changed into new particles.

Then there is the thing called Time Reversal, T-symmetry, T-asymmetry. How do all these things manage to work together? Do they? Sounds like they are at odds to me. I'm just saying.

Can somebody help me out here, so I won't have to spend another sleepless night?

Purity of Opposites

2011-10-01T09:41:00.000-06:00

Wasn't home much yesterday. We took the boys skating for an end-of-summer blast. And then had pizza. We got home late, and I stood out and watched the moon. The Moon is truly a beautiful thing seen through binoculars. You can see craters. Shadows. Rings of light. I stayed out a few minutes more and looked at stars and listened to crickets. One of my favorite Summer-Things-To-Do is watching stars and listening to crickets. Simultaneously. I do it every summer. I look forward to it, from June until November. It absolutely blows me away! The extremes of it! Like lounging in a steaming hot tub of water while it is snowing, and drinking an ice-cold glass of Coke. The purity of opposites!

How can I say it? It's looking and knowing that the stars are out there exploding immense fires and gasses thousands of light-years away--and thousands of years ago, their light just now making it to my eyes. And the crickets chirping in the grass. The immense and distant, and the tiny and near, in the same breath. Their reality.

The hotter the night, the faster the crickets chirp. As the weather cools, their chirping gets slower and slower. And finally, it stops, and they are gone. They say you can figure out the temperature by counting the number of a crickets chirps per minute. My brother, with his near-perfect pitch, can tell you, "That one is chirping in A-flat, and that one in C-sharp!"

The Madonnas of Leningrad

2011-10-01T09:36:00.000-06:00

Last night in bed I noticed that I was reading about a woman who was noticing: "Finally, and not a moment too soon, a toilet.
It is delightful to make water after holding it for so long. She listens to the music of water on water and feels the wonderful release inside her. And to sit where it is warm and private, not squatting over a chamber pot in the bitter cold. One of the effects of this deterioration seems to be that as the scope of her attention narrows, it also focuses like a magnifying glass on smaller pleasures that have escaped her notice for years. She keeps these observations to herself. She tried once to point out to Dimitri the bottomless beauty in her glass of tea. It looked like amber with buried embers of light, and when held just so, there was a rainbow in the glass that took her breath away. He nodded sympathetically but mostly looked concerned. What would he say if she told him her pee sounded like a symphony?"

Debra Dean, "The Madonnas of Leningrad"

'Til the Sun Goes Down

2011-10-01T09:29:00.001-06:00

Saturday, October 1, 2011
'Til the Sun Goes Down

Okay, I notice I feel unsure of myself, because I don't know what I am supposed to be doing here and I wonder if I am doing it right, putting it where it's supposed to be put, and all 'a that, and I know that this is exactly how I feel beginning anything new. Am I trying too hard, or not hard enough?

The air conditioner behind me is pushing out cold air, and I feel the back of my neck starting to ice up, even though it is 90-something degrees outside. I know this because I was just out there to check on my tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers...all those other things are weeds. I do not have a green thumb, I am not an attentive farmer. I suspect I am a really lazy mother for these fuzzy, tender little plants.

I don't know any of you people here. Is this all about Joy? Joy that comes in the morning? Hm. My fingers smell like the tomato vine I just lifted onto a stick. It was growing horizontally like a bullthorn weed. Poor thing, with it's soft, hairy stems and tiny green fruits. The smell is pleasant.

Okay. Now what? The old man next door is mowing his lawn in all this heat. The lawnmower sounds like model airplanes my brother used to fly across the desert. They had little gas engines and were hooked to a wire that kept them flying in wide circles. The airplanes were hand-made of balsa wood and silk. When I was little, our house always smelled of balsa wood and airplane glue.

My husband just brought me a tomato cage, and I'm going out now to prop up my plant. Well, maybe I'll wait 'til the sun goes down.

I Like Spiders

2011-10-01T09:25:00.000-06:00

Good morning universe! Okay, I am up. Dreamed I was painting small, stamp-sized pictures with a PIN. I used to keep a dream journal just to see if I could make any sense of my dreams, most of them truly bizarre, in technicolor with a cast of thousands.... As far as I can tell, there are no great revelations here, no gold nuggets to be mined.

Let the dogs out. Someone peed on the just-cleaned carpet. Hm. Bet I know who it was! Ate a nourishing breakfast of Cheese Crackers with Peanut Butter, and warm Coke Zero left over from yesterday. No wonder I am fat. :(

Looking at the unused birdcage I have crawling with fake spiders of all sizes.... My grandkids ignore it now, but it still creeps out my daughters-in-law! LOL :D I like spiders.

Total silence (except for the ringing I hear in my ears--two layers of sound, one deeper, a hum, and another on a higher note, very high, oscillating, annoying). I don't hear well. Recently bought two hearing aids...one got sucked up in the vacuum cleaner (don't ask). The other still works. So it's only $2,000 down the tubes instead of $4,000.

Pepek the Assassin @ pindroppress.com

2011-08-05T08:29:00.000-06:00

2011-08-05T08:22:00.001-06:00

Joyce is a grandmother of eight. She is also a writer from Salt Lake City, Utah, where she resides with one husband, two dogs, and a lovebird. Her novel, Chrysalis, received a $5,000 publication grant and was nominated for the American Book Award. Her poetry book, In Willy’s House, won her a USPS Laureate Award. She co-authored a poetry textbook, On Extended Wings. Her blog, following the little god is a miscellany of opinions, pictures, and poems. The welcome mat is always out.

‘I would like to crawl inside Joyce Ellen Davis’ mind. In Willy’s House, she did exactly that with her great grandfather. With subtle energy and clean poetic choices she told a raw touching story which buried itself inside readers’ hearts. Now that highly creative, scientific mind gives us an “uncle,” Pepek the Assassin, whom the reader forgets is an invention: he and the other characters in his world are surprising, compelling, utterly real. And then Davis does it again, switching, in Telling Who Passed By, to an introspective examination of a woman’s life, every poem distinguished from the one before; each, startling; the whole, unburdened by naivete. I don’t think Pepek or these rare ruminations could have been born in anyone else’s mind.’ Marilyn Bushman-Carlton, author of keeping things small, Cheat Grass, Her Side of It

A Definite Plan

2011-06-12T10:05:00.016-06:00

Okay. So, for a while now I have become bedazzled with, um, stuff, stuff like Fibonacci numbers, the Golden Mean, fractals, who is buried in Grant's tomb, information saved at the edges of the universe, and the Holographic Principle, and the Information Paradox. I'm doing my best to understand it all.

Bedazzled with The Fibonacci Sequence of Numbers, where the previous 2 numbers are added to get the next number in the sequence--and it's always the same series of numbers: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55, etc. Like fractals, like Pi, it goes on forever. This arrangement is evident everywhere--in our DNA, in the shape of our ears, in the whorls of our fingertips and the proportions of our bodies, in the way smoke rises from a cigarette and oil flows through a pipeline, in the rise and fall of the stock market. It is evident in flowers, seashells, ocean waves, in planetary systems and in galaxies. It's applicable to the growth of every living thing, a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees.... Why? 'Tis a mystery!

I've been rereading "A Responsibility to Awe," by astronomer/poet Rebecca Elson, who envisions all of us, in a time before time, "drifting like a bright mist in a universe still young." The poem is called Antidotes to Fear of Death.

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
and all of us, and everything
Already there,
But unconstrained by form.

And sometimes it's enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

I've also been reading Leonard Susskind's "The Black Hole War," in which he discusses Grant's Tomb, the Holographic Principle, amd the Information Paradox, where all information is never lost, but is stored on the boundary of space. (Wherever that is). INFORMATION that could conceivably, reconstitute itself -- information "precisely coded in Planckian bits far too small to see...think of everything within a million light-years of the sun...that contains interstellar galaxies, stars, planets, people, and all the rest," all coded by information, stored. What is the nature of reality? Everything you know and love is made of particles that contain information--you can scramble them, burn them, chop them up into infinitesimal pieces, but no matter what you do to them the information is not lost--and you could--if you knew how--retrieve the particles and reconstruct them.

Albert Einstein has written: "The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangements of the books--a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects."

While I remain much like the child in Einstein's library, I do like the idea that the unique information that is encoded in all those I love, is saved somewhere out there, just waiting to be collected and reconstituted. Sometime. Somehow.

Pepek the Assassin

2011-05-19T13:14:00.006-06:00

Available in June, 2011, from Pindrop Press.

YAY!

www.pindroppress.com/?page_id=25

What God Said:

2011-05-06T15:49:00.001-06:00

image by cedric sorel

Spring is seeping north....

2011-01-29T10:52:00.001-07:00

For the Bunyans, in far away frozen Minnesota: Spring is well on its way. Alleluia! Keep your eyes open! Here is a bud pushing through toward spring, photographed a few weeks ago at Slick's place. Annie Dillard says spring is seeping north at 14 miles a day. Today it was 54 degrees here. At 14 miles a day, how long do you have to wait? Annie Dillard says, "I don't want to miss spring this year. I want to be there on the spot the moment the grass turns green...I see it from a window, the yard so suddenly green...I could envy Nebuchadnezzar down on all fours eating grass."

The glaciers in your front yard will soon crack to water in the sun. Until then, throw another log on the fire and settle in. And think of me, down on all fours, eating grass!

Big Tent : looking at pictures

2011-01-28T08:04:00.002-07:00

daddy's hard earned dimes

by chiminetty
my daddy grows lean
waiting at the scrubbed table
waiting at the scrubbed table
he reads the comic section
of the new york american
where der gink mit der viskers
is pursued by dose two liddle sissages
dose smarties
it iss vunderful

early evening
and he rests at last
in the twilight
of someone else's labor
all hard muscles
his sweat warm and random
in the loose weave of his shirt
waiting for the oven to bloom
with biscuits

my mother
superimposed on the edge
of his evening's rest
watches the bright horns
of the moon prick the horizon
and one by one the stars
write what they have seen
one by one they drop their
wide circles into her apron pocket
like daddy's hard earned dimes
spit-shined
turning the night silver

the biscuits are hot
the butter unwrinkles its
gold tongues down their brown skins
he reads
if I didn't belief it
I couldn't see it
let's go out for a row on der lake
liebchen

chass
und let us go qvickly

it iss vunderful

(My Dad at work)

Big Tent Poetry Food: Eating the Sun

2011-01-28T07:51:00.002-07:00

EATING HUILZILOPOCHTLI

Why is it
No one hungers now,
Trusting only each other,
Their divine hands helpless
In their pockets,
Their beautiful faceless heads
Down against a lowering sky?

But this little one sees,
Remembers the road that is
A milky spill of suns,
Turns toward a past
Where dead souls know that
Huilzilopochtli is the god who
Ate fire as a sacrament,
Summoning back life,
The resurrection.

See how she tastes his fire,
Lets his sparks light their
Common ether,
Lets them sift through her
Ethereal sky-skin.

She carries away in her hand
Hot coals to light her way across,
To wherever it is
Ghosts go.

(Written to another of Rick Mobbs terrific paintings, The Kiss. Needs work, suggestions?)

Big Tent Poetry 1-1-11

2010-12-28T11:29:00.009-07:00

LIST
Don't ask, "Are you afraid?"--
everyone is afraid. Ask, "Where
can we find to run?"

-William Stafford
More than Words Can Tell

"Where to run?" Stuck here
in our five-dimensional lives
enfolded in a multi-dimensional universe
we run, eat, sleep, make love,
and wonder. We lie in our beds
and watch the light creep in
illuminating cracks on the walls and the
maculate ceilings as constellations,continents,
faces, emblems, and chronicles, interpreting them
as Signs. We hear dogs barking,
touch one another, cry, say goodbye, run, pray,
write poems, ask questions, make lists,
and run, as if any of these things might suggest
true exploration of what really is,
as if they might be messages
from some far star
that will help us understand Where?
And Why? And What it means to be human?

(NOT my ceiling, btw. Just thot I'd mention that.:D )

2010-12-17T12:25:00.002-07:00

Merry Christmas

FIRST, THERE WAS A BREAKING OF WATERS

Once wast Thou born of Mary's womb;
And now, newborn from out the Tomb,
O Christ, Thou bidd'st us rise with Thee
From death to immortality.

--Liber Usualis
Rex Sempiterne Caelitum

First, there was a breaking of waters,
like every other birth,
and pain, before the first cry.

There was a star, perhaps a supernova
spilling fluorescent gases into the void,
perhaps a confluence of planets -- whatever...

whatever, His first words may have been Egyptian,
but the Jewish schoolboys, He among them,
circled at the Rabbi's feet, learned Torah,

learned sacrifice, and love, and loss.
He drew us in by blood, by suffering;
every one of us balancing in air, all newly-blossomed, and Reborn.

Hallelujah.

WISHING YOU WARMTH IN YOUR HEART, PEACE IN YOUR HOME, AND EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL IN YOUR LIFE.

Suit of Lights

2010-12-17T08:55:00.003-07:00

25 Random Things About Me

1. I used to think I could fly (I even wore a cape!).
2. Everybody I ever loved I still love.
3. I have an irrational--almost insane--love for animals (even bugs).
4. I have an irrational--almost insane--love for books--the latest, from Amazon, Mary Oliver's OWLS AND OTHER FANTASIES.
5. I decided to be a writer when I was 12, and began to write the Great American Novel. My novel CHRYSALIS was nominated for the American Book Award by the publisher. Didn't win. (This was not the same one I wrote when I was 12, btw).
6. My great-grandpa was a polygamist. How many of you can say that?
7. I have loved 3 sailors (and that's all I have to say about that).
8. I met my best friend Jan when I was in college, and she is still my best friend, after all these years. We are like Lucy and Ethel, like LaVerne and Shirley.
9. I was a shy and obedient child, a shy and quietly rebellious adolescent; as a young adult I was a hippie, and now I am a shy and obedient old lady (with strong hippie tendencies).
10. In Theater school I learned to become people other than myself....
11. I once got a standing ovation, which will have to last for the rest of my life.
12. If I had been a comedian I would have been George Carlin.
13. I once met Edward Teller, "The Father of the Atomic Bomb."
14. I once toasted a mouse (in the toaster, accidentally).
15. Like Anne Frank, I believe that people are good at heart.
16. Except for stockbrokers and CEO's of megacompanies, who are greedy and evil SOB's!
17. I dream in lurid Technicolor, with casts of thousands.
18. I have five brilliant sons.
19. I have eight beautiful grandchildren.
20. I am afraid of fire.
21. I think I am a good poet and writer.
22. I love my computer.
23. I am grateful that my kids are all smarter than I am!
24. I am still smarter than Tom Cruise (although this may not be true).
25. I don't have 25 friends who have not already done this meme.

My new camera! Me wearing my Suit of Lights!

To Ashley

2010-12-17T08:49:00.002-07:00

Why I Love Poetry

You know, the number of people who love poetry is about the same as the number of people who love to wear Davy Crockett hats. So we are a rare and wonderful people!
I think I was, maybe 9 or 10 when I discovered poetry let you say things you could say no other way, and when I was 15 or so, I found that poetry offered a way of understanding things I never understood before. Poetry sparked a new way of feeling, of insights and images I had never imagined: that someone could write The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees/ Is my destroyer moved me to tears.

Edna St Vincent Millay was my first love. Dylan Thomas was my second. After that there were suddenly too many to count, like stars on a good night, after the first one or two.

Mary Oliver writes of praying in words I think apply to poetry as well:

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but a doorway

into thanks, and a small silence in which
another voice may speak.

Like Abbe Joseph says in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, stretching his hands toward heaven, his fingers like ten lamps of fire, "If you will, you can become all flame." And we all understand what that is like, don't we? And we've all come through the doorway into thanks, and most of us have found the silence in which another voice may speak....

And if this isn't clear enough to be useful to you, stick around. Hopefully one day it will be, and you can become "all flame."

Just pay attention.

I write poetry because sometimes it takes me where I need to go, it says what I need to say, and it ALWAYS says more than the words alone say. Sometimes the meaning of the poem is in the white spaces between the words. And sometimes, after a poem is finished, I am as surprised as anybody at how it happens. It is a doorway. It is a small silence in which another voice may speak, and just sometimes, I do become all flame. It lets me say what I can't say any other way. It lets me be more than I am. And if you can pass the poem on to someone else, that's just gravy!

That is why I read poetry, that is why I write it.

Love, Gram Cracker

Christmas 1975

2010-12-16T13:59:00.010-07:00

December 14, 1975

Dear Folks,

Here it is, Christmastime already. Our tree is up and decorated with paper chains and painted salt & flour cookies, the stockings are hanging by the fireplace, the Christ Child and Mary, Joseph, and assorted shepherds, wise men, cows, sheep and a donkey (and the angel) in our nativity set have found a place in our Bar-B-Q.

Christmas will be a little leaner this year, as I suppose it will be for many people. Money doesn't stretch very far, but I guess the things that are really important we have in abundance. Linn wrote this little Christmas Carol last week. He and his teacher are playing it as a violin/cello duet for the school Christmas program on December 18th. It's part of our Christmas present to you.

I was thinking of last Christmas and how good Jer was with the tree and packages--but this year I wouldn't dare leave one package or ornament within an inch of Marc (we call him Coco now, thanks to Jeremy). His hands are constantly moving, opening, breaking, tearing, getting into.... He has several favorite places to play:
in the fireplace (it's so nice and ashy), in the trash, in the toilet, in the Kleenex box, in the cupboards (I find cans of soup and tuna fish in the weirdest places), and in the pots and pans (they make lots of noise). He still has not found the courage to walk more than three or four steps at a time. Hands and knees work fine for him!

Jeremy is still a very thoughtful, considerate, a gentle little soul. In the nursery at Relief Society, while the other toddlers are busy hoarding toys, or taking things away from someone else, making them cry, Jer is busy taking toys to whoever is hurt, or crying, and he sweetly comforts them.

Kit is Joseph in the Sunday school program next week. I took the beard off his pirate mask to help his robe-and-towel costume. It looks really good. He's also supposed to wear a nightshirt for the school Christmas program. He's resigned now, but at first he said it looked like a DRESS!

We have snow again (after 2 weeks of summer in December), and long icicles are hanging from the roof.

December 18th

Just heard Linn play his music. It sounded really pretty! He's a good violin player nowadays.

Got your letter today (and read it 3 times), and the package came yesterday. Many thanks! We're going to fill our Santa and Snowball candy dish up this weekend. I'm not going to make any gingerbread houses this year. I had six little Cub Scouts over Tuesday making cookies and fudge. What a bunch of boys, when I already have five to begin with! Last week we made decorations from decoupaged Christmas cards. Maybe we'll go caroling next week. They're nice little boys.

I have 15 pages of a story started. I'll send it and you can see what you think. I wonder about keeping it in present tense. Maybe it's too hard to read. What do you think? Got a card from Sis. Jones last week--brings us up to 4 cards so far....

Jeremy knows "Claus' this year. You should hear him sing Jingle Bells. He can sing a lot of TV commercials, right on key! And now he walks around going, "Ho,Ho, Ho!" Nutcracker tickets are all gone. So are Messiah tickets, almost as soon as they went on sale. Costs too much anyway. Well, the fairies didn't wash the dishes while I was gone, and I doubt they'll do them while I'm here--so, adios.

December 19th

Linn's school chorus is singing at Cottonwood Mall next week. Jeremy slipped on the ice this morning and landed on a pipe with his eyebrow. It's all swollen up this afternoon (the eye, not the pipe, of course!). Poor eyebrow!

Tonight we're going to go listen to the Tabernacle Choir rehearse--if we can get a babysitter.

(We couldn't.)

I love Christmas, and the tree, and the lights, and Christmas music, and wrapping and giving gifts. I love to look at the boys faces, at their eyes, as they wait for Christmas to come. I love the excitement I catch from them....

CHRISTMAS DAY, 12:30

We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! It snowed last night, so we have a white Christmas. I noticed that Santa is still carrying around your presents and ALL the Christmas cards we should've mailed in his briefcase....

Marvin and the babies are catching up on lost sleep, the boys are out playing in the snow, and I suppose I'd better start thinking about dinner. Fa la la la la, la la, la, la. We have five little Rock Cornish game hens to roast, poor things.

Marc walks now. He's getting his top two molars and it's sure making him miserable. But he's a very agreeable little person--says "yeah" to everything. Everyone seems happy with their new toys. I glued my thumb to BeeGee's new helicopter's rudder with instant-bonding super-glue. PANIC. Thought for a minute I'd have to have my thumb amputated or else wear a helicopter on my thumb forever...it's sort of like freezing your tongue to the ice tray.

Bye for now, & all our love. Happy New Year! XOXO

J

(Click twice on the pictures to see full size!)

Giving Thanks 1975

2010-12-16T12:39:00.005-07:00

November 1975
Thanksgiving Day
9:30 a.m.

Dear Folks,

Happy Thanksgiving! We are sorry we can't all be together today--I really miss these times together, they come so far apart, and if I could be anywhere in the world today I'd rather be where the rest of you are. It looks as if Marv isn't even going to be here. He had to take two busloads of people up to Park City last night (the last one at midnight), and he got up at 5:30 this morning to take another bus from the airport up to Snowbird. It's snowing like crazy outside. He was going to try to come back to eat this afternoon and then go back up, but I think the weather will be too bad. So I guess Thanksgiving will be one Pilgrim (me) and five little Indians.

The boys have taken their sleds off to the hill at school. I have baked 2 loaves of bread and a pan of cinnamon rolls this morning--now I'm hoping this turkey will thaw soon so I can stuff him. I turned off the parades and cartoons and turned on Beethoven (not very Thanksgiving-ish). Jerry is helping me write this: he's sitting on my lap, pointing to the page, saying "A...B...C...."

With the weather so snowy I guess it's just as well we don't have a long way to drive. We'll light the fire tonight and be glad we're home. But I've surely been thinking of you this morning!

Lee just came bursting in--his face is red as an apple. He's been burying his head in the snow, "making snow-faces," he said. And here come the rest, dropping little balls of snow off their coats all over the floor. They want a piece of warm bread.

10:30

The old turkey (bless his heart) is in the oven. Linn says, "Just think about how he used to be alive and running around!" I told him I try NOT to think about that. He said, "It's for a good cause." I suppose so, if you're not the turkey, I tell him. "Well, we're not turkeys," he says. So much for this bit of wisdom.

The TV is on again, and singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. What happened to Thanksgiving? The snow has almost stopped. It's pretty out.Clouds are laying in the canyons and ridges on the mountains, the trees and bushes are all lacy. I finished writing the roadshow. I think it's pretty good. The play is called The Duyvel and Diederich Katters-kill. It has the Devil in it, and the Ghost of Captain Kidd, and buried treasure, and a lazy man (Diederich) who trades his soul to the Devil for the treasure, and his greedy Wife--all at the time just before the Revolutionary War. It ends with the devil "collecting" as the first shot that begins the war is fired. I'm trying to do the music, too. Anyway, it's fun and it keeps me from getting bored.

We've all had coughs and drippy noses for a couple of weeks--seems like forever. Linn has been taking skiing lessons. He likes it. Gosh, I'm going to try to make a pumpkin pie, so I'd better get going on it. Marv might make it home after all. Darn people who want to go skiing when they ought to stay home with their families and let others do the same.

12:30

The pie is in the oven, the sweet potatoes are boiling. It's snowing again. I am sleepy. They wanted to see Marv in the Bishop's office last night, but he wasn't home until midnight (he stayed about 5 minutes) when he brought the turkey. I was beginning to think we'd have hot dogs for Thanksgiving.... I wonder what they wanted him for? Poor Marvin, I guess he's having a free dinner up in the mountains at a beautiful ski chalet, surrounded by jolly skiiers in wooly sweaters beside a roaring fireplace...when he could be here watching Pippi Longstocking and Mr. McGoo and sniffling along with us!

I must go and change Marc's pants. The smell is drowning out the turkey and pie.

One O'Clock

Marvin came home. Hurrah! But he has to go back in half an hour, and the old turkey won't get done. He's nice and brown, but the popper-thing won't pop up. Everything else is done and waiting. Jeremy is still napping here on the bed beside me. He keeps laughing in his sleep. It must be a really funny dream.

10:30 p.m.

Dinner is over, the mess is over, everybody is full and asleep, except me. (Marvin's not home yet). We had a really nice Thanksgiving after all. It has been a good day. I've been thinking of other Thanksgivings over the years--all of the turkeys and potatoes and pies, all the family together--Grandma and John and his bottle of Four Roses, Aunt Lauree and Uncle Frank and all the cousins--and the Thanksgiving you made the pie and forgot to put the pumpkin in it. I hope you know how much we love you, and how often we think of you. Many hugs and kisses from us all. XOXO,

J.

En Sof

2010-09-29T17:44:00.001-06:00

"See how Christ's blood streams through the firmament; one drop of it will save me. Oh my Christ."

--Christopher Marlowe

I Believe.... (Click it! You'll Be Glad You Did!)

2010-08-25T13:19:00.001-06:00

Big Tent 7-23 LITTLE ELEGY

2010-07-22T12:31:00.013-06:00

My all-time favorite poem will have to remain Dylan Thomas's FERN HILL.

But I want to share another: XJ Kennedy's LITTLE ELEGY (For a child who skipped rope).

I love this poem for its fantastic imagery. Every word means more than the word itself, and every image means something much deeper.

Remember how it felt, as a child, jumping rope until you were so tired you couldn't breathe? So, Elizabeth, this child, now lies resting, out of breath, out of turns. But this poem is an ELEGY. She is truly out of turns, and she will rest forever. Her quicksilver feet (and, really, aren't ALL of our feet quicksilver, our footing on this earth unsure, slippery?) didn't quite clear (and yes, we've ALL "missed," caught our foot on the edge of the rope as it whirred under us?) the whirring edge of night. Elizabeth was tripped by death.

And yes, earth, too, spins circles around us all. Like a jump rope. Time passes. The children grow, and mature, and age, and finally die. And eventually we will ALL "trip up." We are Elizabeth. Elizabeth is us. NO matter how lightly we skip, this turning earth will catch us!

Finally, when death himself becomes the "skipper," we pray: Lord, for Elizabeth's sake, for our sake, trip up death.

The poem is music. Imagery like this is rare. I cannot read this poem without feeling a catch in my throat,(the bell tolls for all of us). Maybe it's because I have attended the funerals of two dear friends this week and I am feeling very mortal. Orson Scott Card writes in his weekly column in today's issue of the Deseret News about poetry in general, about a specific poem he loves by Clinton Larsen, called Black Swans. I'm not going to discuss this poem, but want to note some of Card's feelings about it: "The mastery of it is also astonishing. It is like a complete course in lyric poetry contained in 13 lines. He speaks of "using words with multiple meanings in such a way as to use all the meanings at once." Most poets", he writes, "labor all their lives to be a part of the life and heart of everyone who hears or reads it."

XJ Kennedy does this, in 10 lines. Please look it up!

My poem, an old one this time. But I hoped to use words and images with multiple meanings, and like every poet, I want the poem to resonate in the heart and life of those who read it. 24 lines.

OCTOPUS

Your see-through faces have
run together like watercolor
on oatmeal pages
all my lovers buried alive

I never said goodbye
never knew how
I stored you up instead
in this cluttered attic

inside my head, in a
brown box rough with dust
and tied with barbed wire
for ribbons

one bound creature
of several shadowed hearts
and many limbs
all your vanished words

your brown eyes or blue eyes
all of you locked
together
like a bunch

of mad or hunchbacked uncles
hidden away
who grind their teeth
in my sleep

Kashawing (Big Tent: Love's Old Tweet Song)

2010-07-06T12:53:00.008-06:00

Kashawing

And so,
this pale son of Scottish kings and
ice-white English princes,
a guest among these island terraces and palms
ringed by Sumatra, West Java, Singapore...
has touched the brown daughter
of Silang and Rizel, of
Filipino sampaguita peddlers and tuba traders.
He, on this side, is the jewelled blue Pacific.
She, on the other side, the dark
rolling dunes of the Philippine Sea.

And, having made
a true and everlasting Kashawing,
he has loosened his knotted tie.
She has taken the gold pins
from her long hair.
In the heat-waves of fiesta at noon-day,
there, in the music of bandurrias,
their feet are off-balance from
the sudden shock of the collision
of east and west. Her island-black eyes
reflected in his English-blue eyes
are wider and deeper now,
glowing with light, like all
the houses on Bagumbayan Pequeno Street.

And everything is moving there
on the horizon,
blue on blue,
both of them transformed,
she by his cool European ice, and he,
by her bright island birds.

* Kashawing: a promise to the Gods

(Happy Tenth Anniversary, Marc and Grace!)

Big Tent:: Wild Things

2010-06-12T09:48:00.001-06:00

CARNIVOROUS FELIDAE

Fear follows
me like hungry cats
at my heels
crying

Feed me
their small teeth sharp
I have put out both
meat and milk

peace offerings
but they do not eat
nor drink
they are not pacified

I have nothing left
to share with them
they remain
hissing and wanting

more

So, Yesterday was Memorial Day. All is well.

2010-06-01T09:37:00.004-06:00

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

-- Kahlil Gibran

I have only slipped into the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name, Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me...

Let my name be ever the household word it always was; Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near; Just around the corner. All is well.

-- Henry Scott Holland

Daddy, Mama, Brother: thinking of you, missing you, loving you!

The Golden Record -- What Turns Me On!

2010-05-28T16:01:00.003-06:00

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

When NASA sent out Voyager 1 in 1977, and Voyager 2 a little later, they sent with them this "Golden Record," just in case someone out there should happen upon it, sometime, somewhere. It contains greetings from us in 55 languages, pictures of us, people, animals, flowers. It shares Earthsounds, thunder, wind, rain, crickets, trains, birds, whales...and it contains upon its golden skin the music of Bach, his Brandenburg Concerto #2, Queen of the Night from Mozart's Magic Flute, drums from Senegal, Australian Aborigine songs, Chuck Berry, among others from China, Japan, and elsewhere....

Just the thought of this piece of us, traveling yet outward and further every second, through the extravagance of the universe, gives me goosebumps.

If you want to see everything that's on it, check out the link above! My Big Tent Poem (below) is part of a piece written years ago.

What Turns Me On?

2010-05-28T15:37:00.004-06:00

MINDSCAPE

(an excerpt)

...
And if the sun
should cool enough to freeze us
or explode to supernova
and thus incinerate us all
what alien ears,
on hearing a concerto of whales
a cry of birds
sent out in orphan Voyager
may celebrate our fragile hope
our itching curiosity
with what in alien delight
may pass for sacramental bread
and wine?
...

This Astronomy Picture of the Day Photograph is described: "Long before Stonehenge was built, well before the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, ancient artists painted life-sized figures on canyon walls" in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA. This section of wall is called (because of the larger, dimmer figure in the middle) the HOLY GHOST panel. The sight of this, with the Milky Way stars of our own galaxy showing through a gap in the rocks, also turns me on, gives me goosebumps.

(photo and copyright: Bret Webster)

Big Tent Wordle

2010-05-18T18:01:00.008-06:00

GOD'S PURSE

Look in God's purse
for hidden candies.
This is no delicate Evening bag.
She carries something simple, black,
crumpled. She will open it for you.
You may peek inside
where there are hidden treasures: zippers
and mysterious pockets. It's lining is
a caparison, a wild extravagance
across the back of an Indian Elephant
on the back of a mouse.
Ganash, on a lotus flower,
candies falling from his trunk into your hands--
a tincture of prod and noose.

Suspend your disbelief.
Feel the patterned lining of the purse
with your fingers for proof.
Fondle the straps
that lock the moon in its place
inside the black bag.
Capitulate to the futile terror of Her fecund
nursery of stars across the high,
steep walls that rise up
toward the clasp.

This is God's purse. Sapient, She will
soon fasten the zippers without a glitch,
doff the splendor, and open
a small tin of lemon drops
for our pleasure,
assessing Her role as Mother,
soothing us with linty candies from Her
simple handbag, wearing Her simple
hairnet, fooling us
with Her simple shoes.

(There. I think I used every one: purse, crumpled, caparison, tincture, pattern, proof, capitulate, futile, fondle, sapient, glitch, and doff. Did I miss any?)

Words for a Fairy Godmother

2010-05-15T14:38:00.004-06:00

Listen, I have a confession:
my words think they are
the only beautiful things I have.
They are my lapis lazuli eyes,
my teeth-pearls,
my French damask tongue,
my Speed-E-Namel diamond nails,
my October-opal nipples,
my jade-green navel.
My husband cannot eat them.
My lover's deaf.
Listen, I have sinned.
For penance what shall I do
to bring money home
for milk and bread?
I have a confession: There are worms
in my dreams.
My words are all pigs-in-a-poke
believing that they're treasures.

Must I recant?

(Big Tent Poetry prompt #2 Words)

The Official Tattooed Lady

2010-05-03T17:19:00.004-06:00

I thought it would hurt more
this needling and inking of pictures
coming to life on my skin

this black and blue here
across my heart
looks like an eye

could have been anything maybe
a bullseye for any sighting weapon
ah, hell, didn't I ask for this

sign up for it
didn't I pay
this here across my back

these flowers and snakes
look real, don't they
blood coils and green coils

if you look close you can see
something caught and dying
on those thorns, those fangs

that bifurcated tongue
this is how I make my living, see
I show the world what eats me alive

the little acorns and dollar signs
at the small of my back
they're for love and luck

and the little ladybug here
on my lip
they haven't worked yet

but who knows
why did I do it you ask
I want people to see

what I look like.

(This is what the world's most tattooed lady said when asked why she did it.}

2010-04-18T23:15:00.001-06:00

Carter Family one of Wealthiest in Colonial America

By HENRY BURKE
eagleman@theriver.com

Perhaps there never was an official royal class in North America, but the Carter Family who had huge land holdings in Tide Water Virginia were very close. The fortunes of the Carters in England began when William, Duke of Normandy crossed the English Channel in 1066 to fight for the crown of England. Naturally William brought his most loyal Norman knights with him, and among them was a clan of knights known as Cartiers.

According to the Tapestry, which recorded the Battle of Hastings, William found himself in danger of being surrounded and overwhelmed by English soldiers. The Cartiers rushed to defend their Duke, and saved his life. With out their action, William would surely have been killed, so when he won the battle and became King of England, the Conquer showed his gratitude by giving large estates and other privileges in England and Ireland to the Cartier Knights. The Cartiers became part of the privileged class of England.

The Cartiers were progressive and after a few generations many of the Cartier descendants became wealthy manor owners and businessmen. By the time England founded Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, Cartier had been changed to Carter, and the Carters were among the most educated elite of their time. Around 1612, members of the Carter business cartel began looking at the potential of the emerging tobacco trade in Virginia.

John Carter was born in 1613 at Edmonton, Middlesex, England. He was sent to the Virginia Colony in 1635 and settled along Corotoman River, which flows into the Rappahanock River near Chesapeake bay in Lancaster County, Virginia where he founded 'Corotoman' Plantation. He managed to become a colonel in the militia, and was instrumental in driving out the remaining Indians from the region by 1640.

With the support of wealthy relatives and associates back in England, John Carter had the resources to outfit ships to go to Africa and bring back slaves. He soon discovered that Africans from the Ibo culture were excellent subsistence farmers in a semi-tropical environment, and he chose people from the Ibo culture to become slaves on Corotoman Plantation.

While he eventually had children by his five successive wives, it was his son Robert "King" Carter (1663-1736), by his second wife Sarah Ludlow, whose descendants are associated with the history of the Burke family of Washington County, Ohio.

Carter died 10 June 1669 at Corotoman Plantation, and is buried in Christ Church Cemetery, Lancaster County, Virginia. The descendants of the Ibo people, enslaved and brought to 'Corotoman' Plantation by John Carter were the slaves for future generations of John Carter's descendants.

Robert "King" Carter was born at 'Corotoman' Plantation. The name "King" was not used in jest. By 1700 Robert "King” Carter was the richest man in the English Colonies of North America. In other words “King” Carter was America’s first millionaire! He owned nearly 300,000 acres scattered across the Northern neck of Virginia and he had about 1500 African people enslaved on his many tobacco plantations which were managed by resident managers.

Not only did “King” Carter cultivate tobacco, he owned warehouses where he stored tobacco purchased from other planters, and he owned ships which carried the product to Europe where other Carter family members operated businesses linked to the tobacco trade. His ships were also stocked with trading goods, and sailed down to Africa, where the goods were traded for African captives, who in turn were brought back to Virginia as slaves.

Robert “King” Carter had a son he named Robert Carter Jr., born in 1704. Robert Jr. died in 1732, leaving a son named Robert Carter III, who was born in 1728. “King” Carter raised his grandson Robert Carter III, who became a wealthy planter in his own right, known as Robert Carter III of Nomini Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia. In 1791, Robert Carter III emancipated 500 slaves, including the ancestors of the Burkes of Washington County, Ohio!

Henry Burke is an historian specializing in Afro-American history and the Underground Railroad.

(** Just storing this here until I can figure out how to put it somewhere else....)

Pam Antonivich 1942 -- 2010

2010-04-08T12:36:00.005-06:00

"My heart is heavy as I mourn the loss of a dear friend Pam aka Batman, from ALS. She was an amazing artist and friend who never gave up. I love you Pam, fly with the angels." -- Tammy Brierly (Warrior Woman aka Robin)

Me, too.
.

Smoke from the Central Fire

2010-04-06T14:14:00.004-06:00

Early this afternoon I was saddened to hear of the death of Wilma Pearl Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

In her book "Everyday is a Good Day," Wilma wrote of attending a "Stomp Dance."

"In the past there was a ceremony in which the medicine man prepared a central fire" around which the people danced all night. "In the morning, every person in the village took a new fire home from this specially prepared central fire. Putting out home fires, then relighting them from the central fire was an important symbol of community and shared relationships." She spoke then of the people "attending Sunday morning church services smelling of smoke from the central fire."

Wouldn't it be a great thing if we all, regardless of our various faiths and genealogies took home a new fire and came away smelling of smoke from the central fire?

(Photo by Yodit Gidey/Durango Herald)
.

Illusions of Arrogance

2010-04-05T17:35:00.003-06:00

My old friend Jerry Johnston writes wonderful columns for the Deseret News. Not long ago he wrote one that I especially liked (Saturday, March 27, 2010) and thought I would share. He titled it "Nothing on Earth is under our control," and began by relating how TIME in Yuba City, Arizona, is reckoned. Half the city is on the Navajo reservation. The other is on the Hopi reservation. Because one half subscribes to Daylight Savings Time and the other doesn't, you can time travel from one side of the street to the other. "And here," Jerry writes, "is the funny part. Nobody seems to mind."

Most Native Americans "don't put much stock in man-made constraints -- things like minutes and seconds, private property, mineral rights, and air space. Jerry says these things were invented by haughty human beings to give them an illusion of control.

"They're fantasies," he writes. "And the idea that people can actually own a piece of the earth -- all the way to the center of the planet" is only a little less silly than thinking "you own the air above your property. It's like claiming to own the sun itself, or the breeze in the sycamore trees or the sound of wild foxes as they bark on the hills...I've heard white Americans complain that Native Americans don't show more pride of ownership.

But I have seen puzzled looks on their faces when a town nails a city limits sign on the top of a mountain -- miles away from the community -- because the city fathers want to control all the zoning. And I've seen them listen extra carefully, trying to understand why farmers and industrialists say they own so many cubic feet of a river.

We'd "go nuts," he says, "living in Tuba City. We'd want to beautify the place, when the truth is the desert landscape is about as beautiful as it gets. We'd want to make the place more efficient. We'd want to know exactly what time it was, every second of every day in every part of town. We'd want to feel we were in control of our environment.

The truth is, nothing is under our control. We are at the mercy of the elements and the Creator every moment of every day. Control is an illusion. It's a delusion of arrogance -- like thinking we actually own the air above the swaths of Earth we think we can buy."

.

Tales Well Worth Telling

2010-03-18T18:13:00.004-06:00

Undoubtedly, there will always be storytellers in our midst with tales well worth telling.

Art by Deviant Art
Storyteller by ~sw33tdreamm
.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

2010-03-18T16:14:00.005-06:00

THE FORCE

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower...
--Dylan Thomas

This is how the story goes:

There is a light that only leaves can see,
green cells whose sugar-yellow receptors, like retinas
down the length of their veins, recognize day breaking.

The light is sovereign
as the Father's rituals, as the Son's relics.
The field is white with flowers:
the force is in the flower, and in the field, and in the rain.
The Holy Spirit is light disguised as water.
Will you recognize the glory as it falls before your face,
and on your right hand, and on your left?
Cleanse your feet with water, pure water.

O, sister, lets go down, come on, brother, come on down
O sinner lets go down, Good Lord show me the way

Kick off your shoes! For as long as there is light,
the light becomes a cool river in the heat of day;
fill your arms, fill your skirts with flowers growing down
to the water's edge. We are saved

for such a time as this! For verily, thus saith.

(Down To The River To Pray, Robert Allen Zipkin & Douglas Metgar)
.

RWP Volta

2010-03-09T23:23:00.005-07:00

Volta

Sixty miles per hour
along the Pacific Coast Highway
beside you, and you say, I wish
that you would lay your hand upon my thigh,
and so I do. The sea is gray with rain,
and no perceptible horizon reveals
saltwater to sky.

Now that I am old, ad patres, as it were,
and you are older still, I regret to say
that yours was not the first
my hand had touched.

(ad patres, Latin, to be dead, to be gathered to ones forefathers.) :)

RWP -- The Doppler Effect

2010-03-03T13:25:00.008-07:00

The Doppler Effect

"Uber das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne"

("Concerning the colored light of double stars and other stars of the heavens.")
--Christian Doppler

Centered in the doorway, you stand where a window
Looks two ways: one way the hours swarm into blue,
Colliding like dominoes, piling up like old newspapers
On the porch. The other way the minutes retreat
Like beads on a broken string. Even the seconds
Are strangers speeding away, shifting toward red.

As you wait, entire universes are conceived and destroyed.
There, on the blue side, your mother's body
Has swallowed a seed, and shaped you from air.
A girl with freckles on her lips.
There, on the red side, your eight grandchildren
Hustle toward a future you cannot begin to imagine.

And you. You touch with care wherever the pain is worst:
Your eyes, your neck, your heart. You notice only now
That the window has become a mirror, and the doorway
Is shelter. Shifting now into red,
Your mother walks up behind you, slips you a chocolate
As she passes by. Your grandchildren's soft,
Unfinished baby skeletons tumble faster and farther
Away. And this moment, the Present melting in your mouth,
Is all you need.

(art by H. Koppdelaney)

Cautionary Tales

2009-11-04T09:35:00.009-07:00

I watched the season premier of V last night--I liked it. But I kinda thought I was being hit on from the Right side, because the script could have dripped directly from the pens of Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. What with the Visitors from space sending out messages of Peace and Hope, and *gasp* Free Medical Care for everybody. "You mean, like, Universal Health Care?" shouts one of the actors.

And, yes, Virginia, the attractive, tall Visitors outwardly beautiful appearance belies the slimy lizards beneath their skins. It all kinda left me wondering if I had just been assaulted by a rather thinly-veiled Cautionary Tale directed at the Obama Administration.

Or am I just being paranoid in the aftermath of Republican victories in yesterday's elections? But I liked it. I'll watch it again.

AND. I am reading COSMIC CONVERSATIONS--Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality, by Stephan Martin,
featuring interviews with Brian Swimme, Fred Alan Wolf, and several others. The book begins, "On a clear night, step outside beneath the star-flecked sky and listen,"...and continues, "If you let the immensity of the silence speak to you, questions may spontaneously appear."

Well, yeah. Stephan Martin suggests:"What is the universe?" And I add "Where is the universe?" And, "Why?" To Where I would answer Everywhere and Nowhere. The Why seems easier, although there are so many answers offered by various philosophies and religions...the Hindu version probably comes closest to my Mormon Christianity, with its Tantric view of the universe as "thread, flow, and continuity," in that scripture tells me "worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose...The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof, even so shall another come, and there is no end...."

Stephan Martin asks questions concerning our relationship to the universe, and concludes, "We are Universe!" He quotes Clifford Matthews, professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois, saying that we can sum up everything we've learned through science about the universe in, just four words: "We are recycled stardust," that every atom of us, and of everything we know and see around us was created in the exploding bodies of stars. "WE are deeply interconnected with everything." We are them. They are us.

Maybe when it come right down to it, we really all do see things basically the same--whether our culture tells us the universe rides on the back of a giant turtle or is a thing created of Mind. As to what happened before, or outside the event point we've all heard about--that mysterious spark that began space, time, life--it's speculation. I'm with Bernard Haisch, who says that "Aristotle was basically on the right track when he said we need a prime cause...we might call it God." Why not?

WHatever you call it, when it comes to contemplating life, space/time, and the universe, I like what Albert Einstein said: we have to believe that everything is a miracle, or that nothing is. "We are process, not reality," says anthropologist/archeologist/poet Loren Eiseley (whose books I adore).

"Like a wave continually cresting from its origin," says Barbara Marx Hubbard, in Cosmic Conversations, "the universe has been engaged in an uninterrupted process of change that has surged from its beginning through atoms, molecules, stars, planets, cells, and now lately, humans. Of course, evolution does not end with humans, starfish, pine trees, or any of the life that surrounds us,...accelerating...with changes taking place all around us every day. After all, we ourselves change many time throughout the course of a lifetime, if not each day. WHere is it all going? you may ask."

Then why, I ask, is it so blasphemous to believe the old Mormon proverb, "As man now is, God once was. And as God now is, man may become." (?)

Anyway, whatever your philosophic persuasions may be, Cosmic Conversations is as its back cover describes it, "an eloquent but tough-minded" journey through "searching and heartfelt questions put to many of the world's leading scientists and spiritual wisdom keepers." A good read!

Up next: John Muir's Nature Writings.

Photo: The Crab Nebula from Hubble. Click it!!!
.

God

2009-10-29T12:31:00.001-06:00

Pickles, Brian Crane

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-29T12:05:00.004-06:00

TRICK or TREAT

Here, see how
the pumpkins are fat
and ready for the knife,
the apples ready for the teeth,
their white flesh,
their golden flesh sweet
and ready for the pans.

See how our grins
and our toothy smiles are
their mirror,
their candled, fire-lit eyes
alive for a night
then dark, like ours,
pans-empty, bellies-full
of sweets, wishes, hopes,
and lies.

Jacob is going to dress up as a mummy for Halloween. Simon will be the Incredible Hulk (again). Nelson, in the comic strip Pickles is going as God. I LOVE Pickles! This Halloween, maybe I will be Ms. God. What d'you think?
.

Try to Remember....

2009-08-27T12:17:00.006-06:00

Just saw a delightful version of The Fantasticks last night at the Ampitheater in Layton--a perfect night, cool and starry, with a huge orange half-moon. We tried to see this charming play years ago when we were in NYC, at its original home in the little off-broadway Sullivan Street theater, but it had closed. The show ran there for 42 years. Jerry Orbach (of Law & Order) played the first El Gallo. Now both he and the theater are gone. They have since torn the old building down, and put in a new GAP store (which closed 6 months later). I don't know what is there now.

Michael Ballam, whose classes at BYU Education Week I am devoted to, and attended all eight faithfully, two weeks ago, said when he last saw the old Sullivan Street Playhouse they were in the process of tearing it down. There were huge garbage dumpsters out in front and they were tossing stuff in. He asked if he could rummage through them, and found a tambourine, which he donated to the Utah Festival Opera. Apparently the Smithsonian has the magic trunk, and some other institution has the girl Luisa's little blue dress.... Things change. We live in a time where we are entertained most often by big-budget films with lots of loud special effects. A quiet little musical like Fantasticks is overwhelmed, is something of a dinosaur, I guess, with no special effects but a little colored confetti, a magic trunk, and a cardboard moon....

Anyway, I went home humming Try to remember a kind of September when grass was green, and grain was yellow....

I also spent a week in blooming California with my son Chris and his family. They flew to Salt Lake, and rented a van. It's a l-o-n-g drive through lots of desert. When we finally reached a WalMart in St. George, my six-year-old grandson Isaac said, "Oh, thank goodness, there are people here!"

Let me tell ya, there were people at Disneyland! -- Hindus, Bikers, Goths, white-bearded Sihks in turbans, Muslims, Lesbians, Jesus-people, people wearing ball caps and Mouse ears, saris, T-shirts that said Out of Order, Lucky, Dead Men Tell No Tales, USA, FBI, Dodgers, STeelers, Michael Jackson Forever, Beatles Forever, Grumpy, Ezekiel, Chocolate Rain, Kids for King Jesus, I Piss Excellence, Sugar Water Purple, Marge in Charge, and Murder the Government. I thought I saw Wanda Sykes coming back on the ferry from Tom Sawyer's Island, and Alec Baldwin in the Toy Story gift shop, Carrot Top in the parking lot, and Sonja Sotomayor, and Santa Claus...but maybe not. Isaac defeated Darth Vadar handily with his light saber at the Jedi School, and Keenan mistook me for the witch who gave Sleeping Beauty a poison apple....

Let me tell ya, I saw more cornrows, and dreds, and beads, and frozen lemonades, and baby strollers, and wheelchairs, and more Jazzi and Rascal electric mobility chairs than I could count. I lost my red hat in the Haunted Mansion, my son lost his sunglasses at the Pirates of the Carribean...people, people everywhere, looking for water, looking for shade, for ice cream, for a place to sit down for a while. We threw pennies and made wishes, watched absolutely fearless sparrows gobble up spilled popcorn, and generally had A GREAT TIME! Fantastick!

Wish you had been there! (Photos in my FaceBook)

New Book

2009-08-25T17:14:00.004-06:00

Here's my newest little book of sf stories (3), available for friends and family at Lulu.com, if you're interested!

Morning Dove, The Stars as Sheep the Void as Grass, and Too loose Toulouse--written a while ago for Orson Scott Card's Science Fiction class!

CATCERTO!

2009-07-28T10:05:00.003-06:00

http://www.catcerto.com/cat_video.htm

Go ahead, CLICK on it! This will make your day!

Having Pi Forever!

2009-07-27T14:47:00.010-06:00

Kim Peek is one of us, almost, but not quite. Born in Utah 57 years ago, Kim was something of a celebrity in 1988, when the hit movie "Rainman" came out, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Kim is what scientists call a mega-savant, remembering every word of the thousands and thousands of books he has read in the areas of literature, mathematics, history, geography, sports, and classical music.

Kim has not learned to button his coat, nor tie his shoes. He relies on his father to do these everyday things for him. Today,Kim is one of as few as 50 known savants in the whole world. According to the article written by Lois M. Collins in today's Deseret News, Kim and his father have a "symbotic" relationship. Kim says simply that he and his father "share the same shadow."

I've been reading "My Stroke of Insight," by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, who is a neuroanatomist affiliated with the Indiana School of Medicine. She studies brains, and how they work. The book's jacket describes it as "a fascinating journey into the mechanics of the human mind," of right-brain, left-brain functions, anatomical structure and cellular networks, the two hemispheres communicating with one another through "the highway for information transfer," the corpos callosum. When she suffered a massive stroke that bled profusely into her left-brain (the side that allows us to know where "we" end and "other" begins, the analytical side that controls language, and organization of things like numbers and letters, and speech, etc) she was left essentially with only her right-brain--that fluid, spiritual, euphoric, artistic, intuitive right-brain.

Apparently Kim Peeks brain lacks this "highway." the connective tissue that links the right and left hemispheres in your brain, and mine. It is entirely absent. When he readsa book, he reads the left page with his left eye, and the right page with his right eye, simultaneously. And he reads fast, and with total recall. He is a mathematical genius. He is a huge baseball fan. He loves music.

He is very literal, and, until recently, hasn't displayed much of a sense of humor. Now, reports the morning News, "A math genius asks him how far out he can calculate pi. He answers, "3.14159265, then dad takes me to Marie Callenders's and we have pi forever!"

Tribes

2009-07-16T09:06:00.004-06:00

"...we have the whole tribe behind us and inside us, wherever we go."

A nice article by Orson Scott Card, about our tribal homeland, not our family home, but the homeland of our people. "These days," he says, "It isn't politically correct to talk about 'tribes.'--We're supposed to say 'ethnic groups.' But those are not exact synonyms. A tribe is considerably more than mere shared ethnicity....A tribe commands your loyalty. You look to the tribal homeland as the center."

On the 24th of July our tribe celebrates Pioneer Day with fireworks and parades and reunions and picnics. No matter where in the world your home is, if the tribal homeland is inside you, CELEBRATE!

ouroboros review

2009-07-01T17:44:00.005-06:00

The third issue of ouroboros review is out today. It's available in both hard copy and online editions. It's full of great and wonderful stuff, not to mention that I have two poems in this issue. Have a look! Enjoy!

Happy Father's Day

2009-06-21T09:39:00.010-06:00

Glen A Hatton 1907-1982

I love you, Daddy!

Special Souls

...
Each night I seek out the brightest of stars
and pridefully know that's my father.

by Wiley (AKA Johnny Hart, B.C.)

Leaves of Grass

2009-06-18T17:30:00.004-06:00

I've been reading a lot of Walt Whitman the last few days. Some of it used to hang as a framed calligraphy on my daughter-in-law Amy's bathroom wall:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body... . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured ... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches ... and shall master all attachment.

(From the Preface to "Leaves of Grass")

Purple Belt!

2009-06-10T09:45:00.003-06:00

Starfish has had his orange karate belt upgraded to PURPLE! Bruce Lee once looked just like this!!!

A Book of Fours!

2009-05-25T17:01:00.005-06:00

...finally finished at 2 am this morning, thanks to my son Pix! Beautiful cover art is by my friend Montana Raven, Maureen Shaughnessy. Thanks to you as well! To see it bigger, go to Lulu.com

Bending It Like Beckham

2009-05-17T17:14:00.002-06:00

Simon and Jacob show off their soccer trophies! Congratulations, and good work, guys!

CONGRATULATIONS, BOOKWORM !

2009-05-13T12:56:00.004-06:00

My best granddaughter, Ashley Natsuki, is receiving a special award tonight for staying all four quarters of the seventh grade on the Honor Roll! No small feat for someone who is also an awesome dancer, who plays both piano and cello, and is a beautiful girl, inside and out! I am so very proud to claim her as mine!

Don't be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily. And ~ you should always own at least one table you can dance on! xo

Mother & Me

2009-05-09T13:12:00.017-06:00

She was an artist and a musician. She played a mean piano during the depression for feed-the-kitty dances. She painted landscapes and flowers, and did commercial art work. She designed the label for Joe Apple's Whiskey, and she was the model for the promotional ads for Joe Apple's EZ Tire Changer (so easy even a woman could do it!). She had red hair, freckles on her face, and green eyes. She loved life, and she had a great reverence and respect for all living things. I love her still!

(Eva Pearl Wolfe, October 15, 1909 - March 12, 1992)

THE GIFT

Because I did not know
'til now the depths of me,
and heights I never saw, until
the traces of my childhood past
bore witness how my mother gave to me
the world: in infant hands...
a star, a ship, a tree.

Now I lift my hand
and call upon her name.
"Mother, it is I! Your gift,
so dearly held was not given in vain!"
Because I know this now
I give you back the world you gave to me:
the sky, and seas, unbound and limitless,

and never small again.

(My big brother Gaylen wrote music for this, a lovely, rocking melody in a minor key. Made it beautiful! As a boy, he thought she was the most beautiful person in the world, more beautiful than movie stars! So she was.)

Happy Mother's Day to all of you, and to all your mother's, wherever they are!

Big Brother

2009-05-07T11:43:00.001-06:00

...and look how big the Rhiesling is now!

The Five Faces of E

2009-05-07T10:08:00.005-06:00

All I Want For Christmas...

2009-05-04T18:59:00.003-06:00

Starfish has lost both front teeth (and one bottom tooth) in the last few days. He left the tooth fairy a note saying, "I don't need any money. Please bring me a Bakugan toy instead."

The next morning the tooth was gone, and there was a note that said: "I am not Santa Claus. Ha Ha Ha."

She left a folded dollar bill. Ha Ha Ha!

Blessed Be

2009-05-04T08:43:00.004-06:00

The universe resounds with the joyful cry I am!
--Alexandr Scriabin

...and thanks to Helen and Hugh for their great camerawork!

LMAO!

2009-05-01T09:41:00.002-06:00

I really, really LOVE "Pickles!" Thank you, Brian Crane, from the bottom of my heart!

Give-away!

2009-04-29T10:54:00.003-06:00

Remember these beautiful little girls? On August 7, 2006, four-year-old conjoined twins Maliyah and Kendra Herrin made history. Want to put your blog on the give-away list for a free copy of this book? Just visit Not Entirely British before Wednesday, May 6th to learn how!

Ding Dong...

2009-04-23T10:12:00.008-06:00

www.pindroppress.com

...the bells are gonna chime ~ Pull out the stopper!
Let's have a whopper!...

Another great piece of news: two of my poems have been accepted for the 3rd issue of Ouroboros, coming out in July!

Happy Earth Day!

2009-04-22T07:46:00.006-06:00

Jake and I were working in the back yard yesterday morning, and as the day warmed, the ants began to stir and climb out to let a little sun shine on their winter-stiffened legs and backs. I work a little, and rest my own winter-stiffened legs and back a little, and then work a little more. I was resting when Jacob ran to me with the news, "The ants are having a party!" He kneeled down for a closer look. "I wonder whose birthday it is?" He pointed to various ants in turn. "Is it yours? Is it yours? Is it yours? Look!" he said. "The ants are dancing!" And, in fact, they were.

We do not step on these remarkable little beings at our house. We figure that the earth is wide enough and room enough for all of us to live together peacefully. The Farmers' Almanac (where I found the picture) says if you want the ants to stay out of your house you can use a natural ant repellant, like catnip, mint, cucumber peel, or tansy. I have no idea what tansy is, but I intend to rub a little cucumber peel on my door frame if they decide to party in my house.

Happy Earthday to us all! Party on! And, may I have this dance?
.

Winnowing the True

2009-04-18T19:05:00.004-06:00

Spell for a Poet Getting On

May your hipbones never die.
May you hear the ruckus of mountains
in the Kansas of your age, and when
you go deaf, may you go wildly deaf.

May the neighbors arrive, bringing entire aviaries.
When the last of your hair is gone, may families
lovelier than you can guess colonize
the balds of your head.

May your thumbstick grow leaves.
May the nipples of your breasts drip wine.
And when, leaning into the grass, you watch
the inky sun vanish into the flat page

of the sea, may you join your lawn chair,
each of you content
that nothing is wise forever.

--Lola Haskins

I just spent a fun week-end with poet Lola Haskins, listening to readings, workshops, giving and receiving awards for local poets. Stayed for a night in the white, king-sized bed at the Airport Hilton, ate dinner and lunch, embraced a lot of old friends and made some new ones. I learned that not every line in every poem you write is from heaven, and that most poems start too soon and finish too late. Thanks, Lola, and the Utah State Poetry Society for a grand time! When I go deaf, may I go wildly deaf, content that nothing is wise forever.

Vertu Engendered...

2009-04-13T12:20:00.003-06:00

Whan that April with his showeres soote
The drought of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every vein in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendered is the flower;
Whan Zephyrus, eek, with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sunne
Hath in the Ram his halve course y-runne,
And smalle fowles maken melodye
That sleepen all the night with open ye
(So pricketh hem Nature in his corages),
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. . .

--Geoffrey Chaucer

If You Could Hie to Kolob

2009-04-11T14:27:00.006-06:00

My favorite Mormon hymn, all jazzed up! Text by W.W. Phelps (1792-1872), music by Ralph Vaughan, sung by Kirby Heyborne. Enjoy!

(Kolob, a word of Egyptian origin, is supposed, in Mormon theology, to be "the place where God dwells," mentioned in the Book of Abraham, possibly at the core of the Milky Way galaxy--a place of enormous energy, a high density concentration we now call a Black Hole. Sir Fred Hoyle and his associate Jayout Vishna Norlikar, have proposed... "the sheer amount of positrons [electrons with a positive charge, which occur in antimatter] observed toward the galactic center...[suggest] the existence there of some sort of exotic object." Kolob?

For you Battlestar Galactica fans, Kolob is also the inspiration for the planet Kobol, the distant motherworld of the human race, and the planet where life began. In Hebrew, Kokob = Star. W.W. Phelps grave marker is inscribed There is no end to matter/ There is no end to space/ ...etc.)

Who You Are

2009-04-11T08:40:00.012-06:00

For all my family and friends: GOOD WISHES FOR A HAPPY EASTER! (Please click! Then choose Words and Music)

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and feet. (Luke 24:39-40)

Nelson Mandella, in his second inaugural address.

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

Thanks to Patty Butts at Healing Body and Spirit.

He's Here!

2009-04-10T08:46:00.002-06:00

Meet Evan, my new grandson, looking sharp in his new hat! 7 lbs 15 ozs, 21 inches. (BTW, Evan, I don't like hats, either!).

Never Talk to Strangers!

2009-04-08T07:44:00.004-06:00

My son Marc tells me that Jacob informed him, "Anyway, Dad, I just thought I would tell you that the Easter Bunny is made up." Marc said, "I asked him how the candies and eggs got hidden?" Jake said, "Some stranger in a bunny suit."

Some stranger in a bunny suit! Now that is really SCARY! :0

The Things That Matter Most

2009-04-07T07:41:00.006-06:00

Taking the long view
This poorly titled but really worthwhile story at NPR discusses how the religiosity of Darwin's wife and the death of his youngest child may each have affected his great work.

Death Of Child May Have Influenced Darwin's Work
NPR by ROBERT KRULWICH

EXCERPT: In November 1859, Darwin finally published his revolutionary book, On the Origin of Species. Biographer Lyanda Haupt says you can see the influence of Annie's death in his shaping of that book. "He knew so deeply and so personally and viscerally what death was now after Annie's loss," Haupt says. And, yet, in his writing "you see him affirming over and over this circle, the endless unfolding of life."

In the last pages of On the Origin of Species, some say Darwin confronts the meaning of Annie's demise. Darwin takes his readers to a beautiful forest, rich with trees and birds singing everywhere, and reminds us of the beauty we see every day, in things like butterflies and flowers. And he demonstrates, especially, that humans, who can contemplate and love these things, are all products of millions of years of competition, struggle, famine and death — and that this struggle will continue. So, life will keep evolving new forms and new shapes.

Darwin is stating what "we now call the existential dilemma," says Gopnik in his biography. He is saying there are two things that are true: One is that everything dies, and things die for no reason and to no apparent end. And their death is painful. And, that process of living and dying produces something amazing and beautiful and astonishing.

And, Darwin himself writes, "There is grandeur in this view of life … from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

# # # #

From Sterling M. McMurrin's book The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion: "Religion is a matter of faith and hope, or perhaps of mystical experience. It is, to again borrow the words of one of my teachers, Professor Montague, the faith that 'what is highest in spirit is also deepest in nature,' the faith that the things that matter most are not ultimately at the mercy of the things that matter least. And he has said, it may be that there is no God, that 'the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective by-product of blindly swirling atoms,' that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain -- that we and they are here for a moment only, and are gone, and that eventually there will be no trace of us in the universe. 'A man may well believe that this dreadful thing is true. But only a fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true.'"

I, myself, choose to believe that there is meaning and purpose in all this grandeur, that there is an ultimate order behind a system that includes both the incredibly large and the unimaginably small. I choose to blow upon the spark that keeps "a perfect brightness of hope" burning in me. I choose to believe that 'the things that matter most' are forever.

(Thanks to my son Slick for posting the original review of Krulwich's thoughts on Haupt's book on his blog, KnownUnknowns.)

Subtraction

2009-03-25T08:23:00.003-06:00

My husband says that mathematics is the language of the gods. My grandson Jake, always a little off center, is learning math in kindergarten, and has the concepts of addition and subtraction well under control. He told me yesterday: Hair minus hair equals bald!

:-P

I Signed

2009-03-19T13:58:00.000-06:00

The Rules of Grammar

2009-03-14T11:36:00.010-06:00

Abraham Kaplan, an exponent of Hassidic Judaism, in his analytic paper called "The Meaning of Ritual: Comparisons," published in Reflections on Mormonism, Judaeo-Christian Parallels quotes Edmund R. Leach, writing "In seeking to understand ritual we are, in effect, trying to discover the rules of grammar and syntax of an unknown language." Kaplan says that "Ritual can be regarded as a language, and I am using the word in its broadest sense as a symbol in action." (Italics mine) He continues, "But language is not constituted by a grammar and syntax alone; it must also have a semantics and be a carrier of meaning."

Interpretation of this symbolic language then becomes prime force behind understanding the actions performed. So, who is the interpreter of the Mormon Temple ritual as it is being performed tomorrow night in HBO's Big Love? We, as viewers? The writers? The producers? Can symbols that hold specific meaning as part of a foreign language, to be understood only in terms of the whole system, be communicated and understood in the short and fictitious context of an hour of TV?
Even if it is relevant to the story line? Will it lead too easily to distorted conceptions of Mormonism?

For us Mormons, temple symbolism is something which, in some way, really is what it signifies. No mystery here. No "secret." Just the symbol, rich in meaning, with levels of nuance, making something concrete that is abstract. If we then, privately choose to wear "magic" underwear that reminds us to eat healthily, to pray, to be honest--why should this become a public matter? Whose business should it be but ours, privately? Who gives HBO invasion of privacy rights concerning private temple rituals and sacraments (or their interpretations thereof)? Does your neighbor have the right to come into your house and then broadcast things he has found on your bookshelf, or in your fridge and cupboards to the whole neighborhood, because it is "relevant" to a funny story he is writing about you?

Just wondering. Next question: Does it matter? No. Should I care? Probably.

What I Learned in Church Today...

2009-03-08T14:22:00.007-06:00

...and I should frame it and hang it on my wall: "Don't worry. Everything will be okay in the end. If it isn't okay, then it isn't the end."

;-D

BOP

2009-03-03T16:09:00.004-07:00

CEREUS

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.
~ Michelle McGrane

Tomorrow is a very long time away.
Above you Cassiopeia boasts of her arrogant beauty.
Below you the dust of some night-blooming
flower clings to your feet as you walk among pedestrians
and bicycles across the Pont des Iles toward Ville-Marie.
This is how you come to the end.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.

You may forever after lie awake
in the dark, hour after hour
as if you had died, and time
no longer matters, precise in its disbelief
that tomorrow will be better. Think of it
this way: pretend that you are walking
toward someone who waits for you
in fog, just across the bridge.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.

When you come to the other side, and the fog lifts,
you find a tavern that sells Maranges,
and an old woman sells flowers that smell of some
night-blooming thing you can almost recall;
for that moment, standing on the edge
of memory: something that might really have happened.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.

ReadWritePoem (Words)

2009-03-02T15:12:00.002-07:00

Counting-Out Rhyme

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

(Read it out loud!)

Weathervanes

2009-02-21T15:45:00.007-07:00

For a few weeks I have been at a loss for words. Taking myself too seriously, or something like that. Maybe it was viewing BodyWorlds. Or burying the sparrow with my grandson. Or my creaky back. Or whatever. But I've been feeling, um, unsettled. Doubting the status quo. A weathervane.

Yesterday Larry H Miller died in Salt Lake City, a man I didn't know, (and you've probably never heard of). But he was famous around here. He died of diabetes and kidney failure. There was a picture of him in today's newspaper, Larry as a teenager, looking young and fresh--even handsome--something I would never have imagined. He was a multi-millionaire and lived in a huge house not too far away...the sight of it would make you gasp, it was that big. He graduated from high school with a 1.77 GPA, and dropped out after six weeks at the University of Utah. He started out selling cars, and at the time of his death he owned 74 business enterprises--car dealerships, movie theaters, a shopping mall, a movie production company, restaurants, TV and radio stations, a professional baseball team, an NBA franchise (the Utah Jazz).... He was a creative genius.

Now he has gone "over the hill, as we all must," according to writer Jim Harrison, in his book Returning to Earth. Today I went alone to see The Reader. Since my movie-buddy Nila died last year, (and my husband chooses not to go to R-rated films) I have begun taking myself once in a while. Not often, but I decided that it's NOW or NEVER. I think The Reader was beautifully done, exceptionally performed. I loved it! But it didn't help this fluctuating, mutable, weathervane of stuff I have been experiencing lately. Maybe it's because this May I turn seventy. Seventy. Elizabeth Kubler Ross said it: If there are things you want to do, do them NOW. I can't say it any better than that.

Now I am going to finish my Pepsi, visit some blog-friends, listen to Garrison Keillor, and watch some TV. I'll feel better tomorrow.

image: archictecturaldepot.com

Elizabeth Gilbert ~ Worth Saving

2009-02-13T12:47:00.002-07:00

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
*Thank you Poet Mom, January O'Neil

Broken Tea Bowls

2009-01-26T09:05:00.013-07:00

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

--Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms

I learned something valuable yesterday. I learned about broken Japanese tea bowls, and about the Japanese Wabi aesthetic. According to Zen-cha Roku, Wabi means lacking something, having things run contrary to our desires, being frustrated in our wishes. Things imperfect, things irregular or damaged. Like me, and probably like you, too.

These irreplaceable antique porcelain Japanese tea bowls used in tea ceremonies sometimes become cracked or broken. They are not throwaways. The broken bowls are painstakingly repaired with a mixture of lacquer and gold, whereby they become more valuable, the repaired bowl worth more than the original. They say that the repairs lend character and beauty to the bowl, the repaired imperfections enhancing the design, and they are prized all the more.

Crystal, my teacher, said that once she and her mother were driving in the canyon, and they had just passed one of those signs that warn: WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS, when a landslide of boulders came crashing down on their car. One of her tires was ripped off its bent rim, the windows were broken out. Her injured mother stayed in the car, sitting in a sea of broken glass. Crystal got out, and began to pound on the dented hood. "Why ME?" she asked the mountain. "WHY ME?" I mean, how many times have you read that sign--and NEVER had any rocks fall on you? DO you know of ANYONE who ever had rocks fall on them? Why me, indeed. Crystal said when she was a child, and was faced with disappointments and hurts, her dad always told her to "Cowboy up!"

But, you know what? When I first learned about my melanoma, my first reaction was Why me? Then I thought, Because. Just because. A hundred 'why's'. A hundred 'becauses.' Why not me? Joseph Wirthlin, an LDS Apostle said last October, "The dial on the wheel of sorrow eventually points to each of us. No one is exempt." But you know what else? Nobody ever promised it was going to be roses all the way. The poet Theodore Roethke said it: "I learn by going where I have to go." Sometimes we just have to "Cowboy up."

A note I discovered once among some old papers: Adversity helps men to rise above themselves.

My husband said once, a long time ago, "When you think of the vastness and enormity of the universe, and of the billions and billions of planets and stars, doesn't it make you feel small and insignificant?" Then he added, "Me, neither!"

We are all like the precious flower vase made by Rikyo called Onjoji, and a beautiful tea bowl named Seppo, made by Koatsu--prized all the more because they were cracked, and have been fixed. We may be imperfect, but that's okay.

My favorite songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen wrote: Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in.

Is that true? I think so. :)

At Last!

2009-01-20T16:42:00.003-07:00

Everything is Possible... Tout est Possible...

2009-01-15T17:16:00.004-07:00

Share this image by photographer Karine Doche with your friends. Make it circulate!

NOTE, 1-27-09: A few nights ago on the news, they featured a Muslim Children's Choir here in SLC, singing with a Jewish Children's Choir. After singing songs from each culture, one of the many songs they sang was "We Are Family." Afterward, the people in the audience (mostly parents) cried and embraced one another. I was very touched. The children are performing again next week in the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle on Temple Square.
.

Monday and Me

2009-01-15T16:16:00.005-07:00

This is an old snapshot of me and a house sparrow named Monday. I was 13 or so. Monday was blown out of her nest in our Chinese Elm tree when she was a baby, and she never really understood that she was a bird, and not a person. Neither did we. She was a loved member of the family, until the day she died.

We buried a sparrow the other day (my grandson Jacob and I) who somehow laid himself down to die on my doorstep--none the worse, for being dead. Jacob noticed the eyes, still dark and shiny, were open. Did he crash into the window? Was he attacked by bigger birds in an argument over seeds I threw out the night before? Or was he sick, or old? Jake helped me dig a hole where flowers will grow in spring. We covered him with a napkin, Jake said it would "be easy for him to fly out someday, when he comes alive again." I agreed. I said a few words about how Heavenly Father notices the fall of sparrows. I shed a few tears, (sentimental me!), and I thought about a book I am reading called Returning to Earth, by Jim Harrison, which the back cover says is a "moving meditation on life and afterlife," with a "fierce gentle beauty." And I thought about this bird, and all of us. Harrison writes of a mine disaster where, over a period of 20 years, nearly 2,000 men had died: In the dream I finally understood that death and numbers don't cohere. Everyone is "one." An accident report might say that nine men died, four of them in their teens, but each death was "one." Each of six million Jews was "one." With death it is a series of "ones."

Last week we went to see Dr. Gunther von Hagens' BODYWORLDS at The Leonardo Museum downtown featuring "a unique collection of over 200 authentic human specimens, real people, "plastinated." Men, women, babies, a camel, a camel baby.... I am not going to discuss the ethics of the exhibition. It was awesome. It was even inspiring, as they promised it would be. People doing things in death I'm sure they never dreamed they would do, in life--skiing, ballet dancing, ice-skating, balancing beautifully and perfectly in aesthetic displays that invited all of us to contemplate and reflect on the unimaginable complexity and elegance of the human body. Each of the collection of "over 200" in the series was "one." As was the sparrow Jacob and I buried. As we all are.
.

Happy New Year, Planet Earth!

2008-12-31T09:38:00.003-07:00

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

Earthrise: Credit Apollo 8, NASA
.

...and to all, a good night!

2008-12-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

2008-12-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-22T12:21:00.007-07:00

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a "Good night." God bless us, every one!

* I meant only to post the lovely video, but after you've seen that, take a minute to look around Anne's place for her other great posts!
.

Melvin Clarence Davis (June 8, 1939-December 21, 2008)

2008-12-21T20:30:00.006-07:00

My husband's brother Mel died early this morning of ALS. May flights of angels sing him to his rest. We love Mel and we shall miss him. Our condolences to his children Rhonda, Chris, Scott, Jeff, Kerri, Cindy, Jodi and their families, and to his brothers and sisters, Donna, Alyce, Jean, Richard, and Marv and their families. Mel leaves behind 20 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren.

As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. 15:22)

To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. (John 18:37)

Blessed be.

.

Bearing Witness

2008-12-16T15:44:00.002-07:00

Emily Dickinson had much to share with the world about life, and love, death and hope, and being human on a planet that has much to learn about compassion and forgiveness. Maybe most about hope. "Hope," she wrote, "is a thing with feathers That perches in the soul."

Here is one she wrote called: This Is My Letter To The World

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me
The simple news that Nature told
With tender Majesty

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see
For love of her,
Sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me.

--------------------------------------

And so, Christmastime is when hope perches in the soul of mankind perhaps more than at any other time of year, with its message of peace and goodwill. Here then is my Christmas message to all of you, my friends whose hands I cannot see, in the form of a question, many questions:

BETHLEHEM IN PLEIADES

Is there a Bethlehem
in Pleiades? --
A manger
made of stranger stuff
than hay
where a virgin,
silver-eyed and young
and far from home
laid another Babe
called Christ? --
Or is he called by different names
in Pleiades?
Was it a thousand
thousand years ago
or yesterday
he ran across the four-starred
square of Pegasus
and Lyrae
and Persei?
Is it, in all
the deep Manvantaras of space,
Christmas?
Is it winter on Arcturas?
Do angels carol and rejoice
in Andromeda
to an infant
born only NOW --
light years across the universe
among strange six-hoofed beasts
that stand and low and bray,
thunderstruck?
Do they see
just NOW
the star?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Gloria (again)....

2008-12-14T20:30:00.001-07:00

In case you missed her the first time around, I love this little Christmas angel that tops our tree every year....

ElfYourself!

2008-12-02T22:43:00.004-07:00

(Click it!)
Recognize any of these elves? Sent by my sister-in-law: she and her husband, me and mine, and my mother-in-law.... O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Confessions

2008-12-02T15:30:00.010-07:00

I am Confessions!
by Saint Augustine

You're a sinner, you're a saint, you do not feel ashamed of your past, but it did such a great job of teaching you what not to do. Now you've become a devout Christian and have spent more time ruminating on the world to come rather than worldly pleasures. Your realizations and ability to change will bring reverence upon you despite your hedonistic transgressions. Florida will honor you most in the end.

Thanks to my friend Nienke at The Writing Life for the Book Quiz. Try it! Find out what book you are! I still ruminate upon worldly pleasures a lot though...not to mention all my hedonistic transgressions. Nienke was The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. (Let me know what book you are.)

But what is that stuff about Florida, anyway?
*

'Tis the Season!

2008-11-29T19:01:00.003-07:00

Bookworm and Starfish, the day after Thanksgiving! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

The Way It Was....

2008-11-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

THANKSGIVING 2008

A Birthday!

2008-11-29T17:04:00.002-07:00

My grandson Isaac turned six-years-old the day before Thanksgiving. We are thankful to have him in the family circle. He is smart, and kind to others, and very, very handsome. We're proud you are ours, Isaac! May the Force be with you!

When I was one I had just begun.
When I was two I was nearly new!
When I was three I was hardly me.
When I was four I was not much more.
When I was five I was just alive!
But now I'm six, I'm as clever as clever,
and I think I'll be six forever and ever!

-A.A. Milne

Give Thanks!

2008-11-26T12:07:00.003-07:00

Count your many blessings! Name them one by one....
.

Family

2008-11-16T14:06:00.004-07:00

"We're going to bury you..."

2008-11-11T21:12:00.013-07:00

It's a sad thing that people have singled out the "Mormon" Church as a scapegoat for the passing of Proposition 8, amending the California Constitution to define marriage as a heterosexual act, overriding a state Supreme Court ruling. The backlash against the passing of this proposition has been responsible for a lot of hateful targeting of the LDS Church for exercising its right to speak up for what it considers to be a moral issue in a free election. Let me say, up front, that I didn't agree with the Church's meddling in California politics. While I think concerned folks from Utah had no business contributing to a political campaign in another state, I believe the Church had every right to advise its members in that state concerning what they believe to be a critical issue concerning the ultimate nature of the traditional family.

In fact, we were not alone. Months before the first ads ran on Prop. 8, San Francisco Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer reached out to Mormons (having been bishop of SLC for eleven years, he knows Mormons well) and asked for their help on Prop. 8--seeking the support of many other denominations as well to form "the core" of this volunteer operation. The money was grass-roots donated by concerned people of many conservative faiths. The Mormon Church did not contribute money to this fund. Nobody was coerced. Our young missionaries would never break into anyone's home and scatter decency to the wind as shown in that reprehensible TV ad.

It all seems a bit ridiculous to me, a simple matter of semantics. If the word "marriage" is the problem, then why not continue to call gay alliances "civil unions," or "gay inseparabilities," or whatever else they choose. Equality in every way except their use of the word. I think everyone agrees that giving everyone the same legal rights to make decisions for incapacitated loved ones, the same insurance coverage, and the same respect is the only decent way to go--which, by the way, the Mormon Church advocates, as evidenced by specifically pointed statements published in a Church News release concerning rights of hospitalization/medical care, fair housing, employment, probate/wrongful death rights and domestic partnership rights for gay couples, who have every right to live and love together in a state of gay bliss. Just not in marriage. The M-word.

LDS Temples across California (and in Utah) have been damaged, chapels have been vandalized. Facebook groups have formed telling people to boycott Utah in general (tourism, ski resorts, the Sundance Film Festival, etc.). Websites have formed calling for an end to the Church's tax-exempt status, saying things like: "We're going to bury you (shades of Nikita Kruschev!)," and "Destroy Utah--it is a Hate State," calling us a "religion of Bigots and Hate-Mongers!" We seem to have become a punching bag, and people feel free to shout profanities at us, spit on our cars, block access roads to our temples, shoot out the windows and glass doors of our chapels, and wield their cans of spray paint like weapons. This morning's news reports 2 more chapels in my neighborhood were vandalized overnight and two historic buildings were burned.

What I want to know is this: where are the protesters when other churches exercise their right to decry what they consider to be moral issues? Where are those others who also helped Yes on 8 and should be standing by us? Is Abortion a fair issue? How about pornography? Mormons don't like those things very much, either. Nor do I. Just call me old-fashioned. But please don't call me moron, or scum.

Well. Okay. I feel better now. Sort of. Thanks for letting me vent.

[UPDATE. Wednesday, Nov. 12th] The protests in California and Utah have spread to the East Coast. New Yorkers are now going at it, and protests against Mormons are planned in every state this Saturday: more harrassments and assaults, more horn-honking and spitting, more obscene gestures, hate-mail, and vandalism....

*Sigh*

UPDATING THE UPDATE- Friday-Nov 14, 2008, Deseret News: "Envelopes containing a suspicious white powder were mailed (from California) to two LDS Temples and a Catholic fraternity (Knights of Columbus), prompting a hazardous materials response and a federal investigation into who is behind it...." The FBI will probably discover it is cornstarch, but it might have been anthrax.

UPDATING THE UPDATED UPDATE! My good friend Orlan (see comments) suggests you take a look at this article for a well-balanced view of this issue.

. . . .

Also, on this Veteran's Day, when I saw on GMA a tearful mother in a cemetery embracing her son's tombstone, I cried with her, and remembered why I am glad to be movin' on from Bush to Obama....

Photo Credit: Beetle Blogger