Blog Blog Revolution - Women's Voices

(Click the picture to see the new moon.)

It's the weekend - and (with Peter away for a while) I can just browse and ponder this expanding world, the blogosphere, that I've plunged into. And it does feel rather like a plunge. In reading these blogs and comments, I've felt there was something familiar about the give and take, the self-expression and response, that I finally identified as very much like the experience I had for many years as a member of the Women Poets of the Twin Cities (later Women Poets and Writers of the Twin Cities).

We started when I was a college kid, and the first meeting (if I remember correctly) was held in my scruffy apartment on Grand Avenue, a block from my school. This was (it dates me) the beginning of the Women's Movement, as we called it then, and women writers in my burg were just beginning to recognize that they had been second-class members of the writing community, or felt themselves to be. The journal editors - the creative writing professor/gurus - the international poets coming in for readings and booze-drenched parties - all were men, and we writing women came along for the ride. So some of us, who had met each other at those booze drenched parties (and sometimes shared the same booze-drenched writers as romantic interests), decided we were interested in - each other, each others' voices, each others' ideas, experiences, wisdom.

This group continued to meet, once each month, and did occasional readings and published at least one or two collections over the years. A couple of women who started with us moved away into lives of being full-time professional writers, feeling perhaps that the group wasn't up to their level, or not appreciating that the primary purpose of the group was not so much to hone the craft as to share lives at a deep level through the writing that people were doing. There was one woman in the group who was a particularly influential mentor to me in the art of being a mother and continuing to have a creative spirit. I needed that model when I started my own family.

Alas, I couldn't continue to meet with the group (though some of the members are, I believe, continuing to meet even today, more than 30 years later). Raising children - working full time - teaching occasional college courses on top of that - and trying to finish my degree on top of THAT - consumed more than a decade of the prime turf of my green and growing years. I also found that what discretionary time I had was spent with my Quaker meeting (serving on committees, being involved on the planning group of our regional Spiritual Nurture program for some years).

But - now my young 20-something men are (more or less) launched - at least out of the house for the present. After wanting to find some way back into writing that offered more than the insularity of my journal, I finally started blogging.

I had read blogs - usually blogs of some of my favorite authors, which I found when I researched them on Google. These bloggers seemed to have so much fun doing their blogs, and they had such lively, affectionate blogging correspondents. I thought it was something that could only happen to published writers, or - I don't know. People living in London.

But plunging into it myself, I find that it is a very open community, much like the Women Poets used to be, where each voice is given attention, whether or not it is polished. We used to give feedback of the sort and level appropriate to the sophistication of the writer, and always with kindness and empathy. It never was a "professional writer" sort of place, but a community of soul-builders, supporting the development of self-understanding and the strengthening of our women's voices, through calling out what was strong and good in what was shared. That's what I'm finding now in the blogosphere - hundreds of women (and men, too, but I gravitate to the women's blogs), all communicating facets of their lives, from the hilarious to the trivial to the heart-breaking, and receiving, for the most part, thoughtful and warm-hearted responses.

My Women Poets group started out as part of a revolution - thinking we needed to give voice to the previously unvoiced women's perspective to bring the world into better balance (remember this was at the end of the Vietnam War). I love that women now have places to share their lives - old and young, home-schoolers and professionals, mothers and artists living on the bohemian edge. And creating community with others, full of laughter and sometimes tears.

Work blurring with home

A short opinion piece in the paper struck a nerve today: (Jim Shea/Hartford Courant - "What a way to make a living") - with a description of something like "work-creep." He described that because technologically we can work at home, pretty soon there's an expectation that we are doing so pretty much all the time (checking e-mail, doing reports, doing work-related research . . . ). I had a list of work-related things I thought I would tackle over the long weekend, but didn't - instead, I experimented with my new camera, discovered and read new blogs, helped Peter get off to Philosophy Camp, then rushed my grown-up-kid Ben off to the urgent care after he got a deer-tick bite that was getting infected (bulls-eye rash, etc.). He should be fine, but I flipped instantly back into Full-Scale-Mom.

And this coming week, there won't be much unbroken project time at work, as we are doing three days of training. Also, I'm now working in a cubicle for the summer, with the buzz and rustle of others in motion around me (chatting, strolling past to visit the bathroom), which makes it hard to do concentrated work.

The columnist said we used to use the word "workaholic" - but now, he said, the behavior is admired. Is it? What changed? Why am I faintly guilty all of the time that I'm not doing "something productive" e.g. work-related?

In spite of the guilt, after doing the mom thing, I made it to my nearby public wild place, the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary. New camera: not so good at scenery (I revisited the reviews and found this was clearly stated), but nice quick, close-up pics of flowers. Also very nice to have something in my pocket. (Click to enlarge - REALLY large - I'll size them down in the future.)

Here are the links to new / old blog posts

I started with a recollection from a conversation years ago that led me to connect Rumi and country western music.

Then I went on a fruitless Google hunt for the perfect image of Divine Love.

I reflected on gender and the Spirit - which led to another search on Google images (and a Russian icon of St. Sophia and her daughters, Faith, Hope, and Love).

And the last posting of the "secret" (e.g. unvisited) blog was a long-poem reflection on loss, grief, and the search for connection, accompanied by photos from my favorite local nature sanctuary. (Note - pictures enlarge if you click on them.)

Then - I started over with this blog, and now it's all in one place.

No more blogging today - I need to get outside!

Putting it all together . . .

I started blogging very privately earlier this year, picking a pseudoname and an obscure blog title, and for some reason, nobody noticed or at least nobody commented. That blog was about, more or less, the spiritual side of my life. This blog ("Is there anyone else up there?") has been about pretty much anything going on in my life - except for the spiritual side of things. The tone has been more tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted, than my first blog, which had perhaps somewhat too much of a weighty or sometimes academic tinge.

For some reason, religion/spirituality is harder to talk about than most other things about us, except in contexts or communities where there is already tacit permission for God-talk/Spirit-talk. (I am really fortunate that one of these places is the college classroom setting where I teach one course a semester as an adjunct in Religious Studies. This is an overload to my "day job" doing college student services administration.) But I will say that, even though I am a member of the Society of Friends - where a spiritual practice and religious experience are supposed to be common ground - even in that community, many people struggle to find ways of talking about what is really going on with themselves spiritually. And there are many, many differences among us in my Friends Meeting - often around this difficult notion we call "God".

So, I'm plunging in today and uploading into this current blog the postings from that other, hidden blog, with the thought that this writing reflects important parts of the puzzle that is me. Maybe there are other long-dormant puzzle pieces that will stand up and want a voice (the poet part of me? the memoirist part of me?). You'll find them in January and February.

Let me know what you think!

New Camera - Old Dog - Spring Days

Somehow, I blinked and May is almost gone. It started with an unusually hot and bright May Day parade and ceremony in Powderhorn Park, put on for the last three decades by the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater, and involving scores of neighborhood people.

The theme of this year was the importance of the soil and of green, growing things as the real source of our wealth, contrasted to greedy profiteering / credit card companies / banks, etc.



During the pageant, I sat under my umbrella for more than an hour, feeling smug and grateful that I had some protection from the unusually bright sun.

I was using my old camera, which has served me well for several years - very advanced for its day, with 3+ mgpx photos. But I've been hankering for something that would be small enough to carry in a pocket, which I could always have around, so I would take more pictures (and have things to illustrate this blog with, incidentally).



So I picked up the latest version of my old camera - still very much automated, which wouldn't please a real camera buff, but works for me. Playing around, I found that it can do very acceptable short videos (I'll try not to subject folks to too much self-indulgent sharing). Now 10 mgpx.

Last Easter, Bridget brought a bowlful of little packets of candy and flower seeds for folks at Meeting. I took home some extras and found that I liked the Spongebob Squarepants gummy crabby patties, so picked some up on sale yesterday at Walgreens. Don't eat them before breakfast.

Speaking of SpongeBob, you might get a kick from this movie review from the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/spongebob.

The big question this holiday weekend is whether I'll get out and plant any of these seeds. I bought a big shaker-can full of flower seeds - last year? - some time ago, and never planted them. But I did plant five baby flowering trees that Joelyn got when she donated some money to the Arbor Day Foundation. A couple of them - skinny twigs, really, poking out of their little bowls of earth - are looking like they might sprout.

But mostly I've been taking pictures of my ancient and creaky dog Rufus. He has good days when he eats well and seems happy to stumble about in the yard or take a short walk, and less-good days when he seems to have no energy and turns away from his food. Kidneys shot - cataracts - arthritis - hearing shot - yet he still seems to enjoy being on the planet.

Off to do some lunch, then help Peter finish packing for his month at Philosophy Camp, then - who knows? - a nap could be in the picture. Or tackling the grown-over garden and planting those bright flower seeds?

My Extraverted Evening

We spent the evening in contact with others, first by going to the 50th birthday celebration of our long-time friend Julie, then stopping by a cozy Irish bar (Merlin's Rest) to visit with Gigi, one of Peter's fellow Philosopher Campers who was just back briefly from Thailand.

Julie, the birthday girl, was looking wonderful in a simple top with a cascade of beads looping over it, and a long flowered skirt. She had asked people to bring "colorful food" for the potluck meal, and they had complied: we brought a red bowl of strawberries (more strawberries arrived later); there was a tall cylindrical bowl of brightly layered Jello; many salads; many platters with sliced veggies, especially sliced peppers; a cake with a crazy-quilt frosting of many colors; and some rice crispy bars with colorful M&Ms. As Peter's North Dakota relatives have been reputed to say, "the feed was good."

But the din when we arrived was like getting hit with a wall of sound. Family and friends filled the modest living room, where a dried branch arrangement glowed with pastel lights in the corner. The kitchen was full, too, of talking, eating people. There were two little girls, one in tiny pigtails remaining in her mother's arms all evening, and one toddling after the cat. A somewhat older (6-year-old?) girl with a foot in a splint played a game with her mother of bouncing balloons back and forth, in the only clear space left, up by the front door.

I parked on a small chair in the background to watch, and waited for opportunities for a couple of conversations, one with Julie about our kids - they had been babies together - and our jobs - she now teaches at a community college, and I blend administrative work in student services with some adjunct teaching. We both agreed that we prefer teaching adult students to the 18-year-olds, because adult students have life experience to draw on, even if their academic preparation is limited.

After the food, the champagne toast, the cake, we left. In the line-up hugging Julie on the way out the door, I explained to a woman admiring my red bowl that it was part of a multicolored set I had gotten at Cosco.

Then the drive to Minneapolis, stopping off at Lunds for some breakfast eggs and some Tums for the dog's anti-kidney-failure diet (a diet I found on the internet, which has given him a new grip on life - my Ancient of Dogs, Rufus).

Gigi was holding court at a long table close to the door in this noisy, friendly, kitsch-filled Irish bar. She was animated and vivacious - but Gigi always is, flashing her wide grin, talking about her experiences and plans. Gigi is entering into the University to do an MFA in film this next fall, and told us excitedly about her experience visiting the program. We chatted about her time in Thailand - she had loved the place, though the job she was there for turned into a disaster. People in Thailand don't cook, she explained, because it's too hot. They all head out to nearby stands to get food. She learned by experience what was safe to eat, though, because sometimes food would be standing out too long. I recounted my lessons in Ghana where I learned to eat food from the market only if I could see it cooking away. The best tactic is to carry your own bowl around. Fruit that can be peeled was safe, too. (Actually, the most danger at that time was the high-cost restaurants serving Western food, because things like lettuce salad could be tainted).

Another of the Philosophy Campers was there, a quiet, self-assured girl whose name escapes me. She is doing an AmeriCorps project housed at the College of St. Catherine, and told us happily about the great program, the great nuns involved, the skills in intentional communal living and leadership she was learning. Next year: off to work with border/immigration issues, largely on her own. We talked about ways she is planning to brush up on her Spanish. Peter urged her to come to church at St. Frances Cabrini sometime (as most of the folks from St. Stevens have sojourned out of there after a conservative priest was appointed).

We headed home up River Road, coming under the 35W bridge, flooded with green light, and through downtown, along the river, past the new Guthrie Theater. I like this route, as it's scenic and has very little traffic. Then, I spent a long swatch of time on my computer scanning through different blogs to see what was out there, looking for those I might want to follow. I recognized (as I stumbled to bed a bit later than I should have) that I was looking for potential on-line friends - but maybe in the wrong way.

My impulse was to look for people a lot like me (or my perception of who I am, which may not be the person that others experience at all). But what can I learn from that?

At the end of my search, I realized I really have enjoyed more finding connections from the serendipity of the blogger world - peeking into the concerns and joys of people from all kinds of corners of the world, by following the threads of one blog to another. So last night I found a blog largely made up of photos (including a trip to Madrid) and short reflections by a nurse in Germany; recently, I found a blog by a young college student "outside London" who reads poetry and graphic novels (he had commented on a word he liked in my last blog, "protoplasmic.") And I especially enjoy the couple of people who found my blog and started following it, right after I began. How did they find it? I can't even imagine. One of them, particularly, has been writing steadily to "improve her English" - sharing her busy life teaching young people in some northern European country.

In my recent random link-to-link walk through Blogville, I've found blogs with pictures of spring flowers, with fashion designs, with poetry that the blogger finds inspiring. And last night I did find some blogs of people who share some of my interests, but with a twist - one, a young Quaker whose main concern in his blog is to reach out to others who, like himself, are ex-gay survivors (have come back out after attempting to be "cured" of their sexual orientation).

Many voices, many lives. I do need to keep this reined in to an extent, in my busy life.

I am a new blogger, and I see others who have long-established friendships in their blogging world. How do I proceed? Can I sustain the effort? What are my intentions in writing? Well - I enjoy it! Welcome to my world, anyone who stumbles on this. Write to me, and I'll write back.

Blink - - and it's late March!

I've been doing my good-old-workaholic thing this last few weeks. Usually, this makes me feel virtuous (useful, worth keeping employed, etc.). But something I was listening to while on the bus - oh yes, it was Marion Woodman's _Crown of Aging_ - gave me a reminder of something I've known for decades, which is that work-sickness is an addiction like any other -- just one that's seen more positively in our Puritan-shadowed culture than drug addictions (that put people out on the streets - so wasteful) or love-addictions (after all, love makes the world go 'round, and all that).

Actually, Woodman was talking about these other sorts of addictions, and I was sitting there feeling pretty virtuous for my clean-'n-sober condition when she mentioned work as an addiction, and it hit home. Yep. That's me - the job junkie. I wake up organizing my quickest possible get-away, mentally jotting down the day's to-do list. Then, when I get there (sometimes carrying in my breakfast to eat while doing e-mail), big chunks of time can melt away as I handle tiny but (seemingly) urgent tasks that pile in - bing! - on my screen, so that at the end of the morning, I haven't gotten much farther down the pile than I was when I started.

Then, I might sneak a peek at Facebook, which I've just joined. I don't much like the pile-up of everybody's business that the new format pops me into, but I look at the tab of my friends (and acquaintances) list and reassure myself that people are still having human stuff happening (eating cheese sandwiches, walking dogs, having a laugh). Then - more of the same, sometimes three or four meetings, sometimes a bit of human contact in the hallway.

When I was doing student academic advising, I had more face-to-face human contact, and I do miss that in my more bureaucratic role. However, I find myself surprised at how much fun some meetings can be, even on dull subjects (like reforming academic policies) - when the people are smart, funny, good-willed - sharing an interest in thoughtful and creative institution-building to improve students' experience at our university. I don't even really mind e-mail requests to solve problems, provide information, clarify puzzles. I enjoy explaining how things work, or clarifying the purpose of some policy or process.

I just need to keep in mind that I'm a protoplasmic being, a mammal in need of some movement, some fresh air, a break for lunch. And time to dream.

Unchanging change - losing and finding

Written in the autumn a couple of years ago (I have written a fair number of reflections on this lovely place - the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary - a sanctuary indeed).
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Coming today to the garden

I am seeing change in motion

the seeming solidity
of massed trees and leaves

becomes translucent, now veil upon veil
of golden and green.

My gaze slips through
to the steep hill banks
on the hillside, still
massed and brilliant.

Gold flecks fall and fall
leisurely, separately,
tens at a time

to patter down through
pellucid air -

like manna, like divine
energy
coming into matter.

And here, farther in,
more trees bared

reveal the ordinary
earth and oncoming winter.

Yesterday's bold and brilliant blue

is softened by skeins of cloud.

Change in motion -

beyond our grasp.

Two days ago,
down the brilliant color
of the river valley

the family came canoeing

just when I was here -
snapping pictures of beauty -

their lives were overturned
bythe freak canoe accident

pinning little Rosa in the water.

That evening, as their inconsolable
grief took hold, unknown
yet to us,

in the darkened Quaker meetinghouse
our atheist, god-seeking poet
read out his poem

about children on the water -

like leaves -

"They could be yours."

What he meant to say,
is hearts are breaking
everywhere,

hearts embracing
intolerable pain
of each other.

Soon, the golden mass before me
will be empty,

the veils of beauty on beauty
that lifted me
from sorrow, that seemed to
know it,

and answer with steadfastness,

soon will be no more
than a memory
a handful of photos, flattened

and falsely still.

(Squirrel comes gazing and
gazing at me;
fly lights
upon the page.)

I came to interrogate the garden -

the presumed power of order
and renewal behind it -

and my own unvoiced question:

How do I live?

Stripped to its bark
and bare earth

(as I know it will be)

how can I endure my life?

Today, I said I would come here
to open myself to whatever

might be softly spoken
in the wind.

And now, in this hollow tucked away
at the back of the garden,

I sit - the light can fill it
now most of the leaves are gone.

In front of me a gold-green maple
still holds its leaves -

soon, they'll all drop down
a ball dress shrugged off
at the weary end
of the festival.

Squirrels rustle around me -

unalarmed by my stillness.

A chant comes to mind
(perhaps willed for comfort
perhaps in answer):

"All I ask of you
Is forever to remember me
As loving you.

All I ask of you
Is forever to remember me
As loving you.

"Ishq Allah
Mahabud Lillah
Ishq Allah
Mahabud Lillah."

As the infant looks trustingly
at the parents
who adore their child,

I will gaze at this world
and dare to receive
the laughing affection
of the world smiling back,

they eyes of my heart gazing back.

There is no separation.

Though the sun sinks, the leaves fall,
the squirrels take long naps,

though my energy ebbs,
the brightness of my mind
dims and stutters,

You gaze at me still
and hold me in unchanging affection.

Now, always and everywhere,
as fears of loss and failure
fill my mind with whispers:

may I lay them down
let them go -
wafting in the unchanging change -
leaving me simply here

in the spaciousness of light

companionship of squirrels

digging through fallen leaves.

Not At My Shining Best (and Response to LaMott)

This is a typical end-of-workday mood, when it seems the day has flipped by like pages blown by the wind (in an open book, out on the lawn . . .).

I've just finished listening to Annie LaMott's Grace Eventually: Thoughts on Faith. How is it that Bush-hating no longer seems, oh, so very engaging any more? The administration-we-loved-to-hate is gone, flown away in a helicopter shrinking, shrinking, becoming a speck on its way to Texas. And - it's feeling just as grim, just as perilous, now with another 200+ points falling in the stock market yesterday, now with impending lay-offs in my University (place of employment), now with my dear but not world-wise older son off in New York soon to fall out of my health insurance plan by turning 25. It isn't right that health care is doled out only to the productively employed, or those employed by big enough enterprises (which he, working for a Philly Cheese Steak dive in Manhattan, is not).



(That's my kid.)

But reading LaMott does reassure me that self-loathing can co-exist with being a worthwhile person. I was fumbling at trying to describe this (regrettable) feature of my own psychology back in the depths of late November, when I thought of tying it in with a discussion of SAD and the Dark Night of the Soul. It was so dark, so cold, and I felt so wan, so inadequate. But, really, that was a touch grandiose: who am I to have a full-blown Dark Night? I have a dear friend who is suffering a full-blown depression after the death of her father and the shredding of a recent hopeful relationship. My own anhedonia, distress, discomfort, slippage - not at the same level. Except that I don't believe I've been weighted down by quite this level of self-dislike since, oh, seventh grade. And I'm not really sure where it's coming from.

LaMott has a narrative arc in these quick, comic sketches where there is the build-up of distress and dismay, the overreaction or blunder, and then the interruption of the arc by a realization/recollection/intervention that is what she means by grace. There's a restoration of hope and tenderness. I'm familiar with this experience of self-recovery, or recovery of clarity and reconnection with the sources of joy, but it's not happening as easily these days. And I feel shamed by my stuckness, embarrassed by it (which adds fuel to the inner burn of fear-of-inadequacy, etc. etc.)

Whew! Well, I've said it out loud. I'm having a hard time being me, and not confident that there's some wind, some wings, some easy rise out of this particular muck. But at least I'm comforted that it's not some hideous singularity, some repulsive secret flaw nobody but me has ever experienced. Annie LaMott feels shitty from time to time too, even after becoming a successful writer with many people who are fond of her and let her know it. If only I didn't have inner parental voices that sneer, "So, just get over it and think about someone else for a change!"

(And in the other room, from the television, comes Barack Obama's voice exhorting Congress. . . .)

Weekend stillness

This is a still moment in a rather lazy weekend. I've been sleepy and slow, though I should be doing many things (grading papers, following up on some work projects, cleaning my house, vigorously pursuing insight through journaling), but instead I've been napping.

But perhaps I need to accept the limits of time, and gently release myself from my driven expectations. I need a new way to make decisions about how to spend time: not driven by inner compulsions, or (as often happens) resisting the inner compulsions by wasting time in ingenious ways. How about finding out what would really give me joy? How about connecting to someone I care about? How about doing something to renew my body, like some yoga stretches? What would it be like if I could act out of something positive, instead of this old compulsion-resistance dance?