Found Things

It's interesting to me how things I cherished at one point in my life can lie in a drawer for a decade unremembered. I took on the task of cleaning the top drawer to my bedside table last week. I knew it needed to be done. I'd not seen the bottom of that drawer since at least 1994. It's the drawer where I toss everything from a card with new bobby pins to some over the counter drug Roger wanted me to take back in the years he was in my life.

I remember that drug. It's in a small clear capsule and the drug itself is brown. According to his instructions I was to take about 10 of these at one time. After that I had dizzy spells and really bad constipation. I stopped taking them. When he brought me replacement bottles, I tossed them in that drawer. Cleaning the drawer I tossed fifteen bottles in the trash!

I also found twenty-seven eye shadow compacts, some of which were new and some of which were exact duplicates. There were seven mascara wands! My friend Ann tells me I should replace my mascara every three months. I bet some of those were at least six years old. What's funny about this is I wear make-up maybe six times in a month and make-up to me is just mascara and eye shadow.

But that's not what I said I cherished. Cleaning that drawer led me headlong into cleaning out a hammock where I found seven stuffed animals; from a Gund bear I bought from the Hug Factory long ago, to small bears that friends had given me for my birthday because they didn't know what to get me. One was a "friend" bear with a cute saying from Ann and one was a bear wearing vinyl red fetish clothing and a small whip!?
Sometimes I realize I've lived lives that I don't even remember the details of any more!
Eventually I got around to cleaning the small drawer in my chair side. This is the old green broken down Lazy Boy near my computer. I found hundreds of rubber bands from the daily paper, uncountable packets of salt and pepper from Dairy Queen biscuits and gravy, from back when I could hardly pass the place in the morning without stopping. Buried under all that was a book mark. I don't remember who got it for me, for I could tell I'd not have bought it myself. The picture is here. I've begun to use it again and it is, as I type, buried on page 363 of "South of Broad." I hope to finish reading that book this week. Then the book mark will be buried in another book.

Miles and miles of smiles.

I drove around my part of town today. The snow is still piled up in shovel created drifts along the walks and roads. Everything else is bare without cover, a little wet from the rivets of water running out of the snow hills. In bright sunshine without wind we won't have any snow around by Monday.

This freedom is one that feels brand new to me. I've been pretty much confined to the house for these past weeks. I'm not alone in this either. Louisville is a northern southern city but people here are friendly. Today there were more smiles from those waiting for a light and the people I passed walking into church. It's just the realization that spring really is just a few weeks away and the Derby will be run in TEN WEEKS

Wading through the blogasphere peeking in windows.

I have been spending too much time browsing blogs. It's a mindless way to open a window and spy on the public face of strangers' lives. I say the public face of their lives as I have to believe there is quite a bit of self-editing going on. Think a digital year-round Holiday Letter!

The ones that are not somewhat commercial are in several distinct categories, and the categories are somehow maintained together. I hit the first "Jones Family" blog and the next twenty will be other surname family blogs. There are a lot of pictures of birthday cakes in very imaginative if poorly executed designs. The candles blaze and the birthday child leans toward the flames with puckered lips. It's a standard uncoordinated shot everyone has on family blogs.

Women start blogs when they become pregnant. Every day of the waiting is faithfully documented with the obligatory pictures of her swelling self. When the child is born there will be a mass of pictures of the small red wrinkled baby, and then no more posts until the child is two.

The blogs about family always have a large number of pictures of the kids. It seems parents spend quite a bit of time trying to catch the cute kid with the cute pet. There is special documentation for the first child. When the family has three or four children you only see vacation pictures.

There are the single mother blogs, detailing the emotional scars and their struggles to raise their children and work.

There are blogs about an obsession for a particular music genre or artist. Graphic designers and photographers are bloggers. Some of the photography is first rate. Some is awful. Who tells someone their photos are awful? If anyone does they don't post it in the comments.

The blogs that are all about fashion, the latest gadget, who's dating who and "did you see what that girl was wearing?" These are blogged by young American women. These are not to be outdone by the Japanese teen blogs, which look remarkably like the American version.

There are blogs about hobbies; sewing, embroidery, tatting, cooking, rip offs from the Julie & Julia concept.

The men are blogging about religion much more than women. Women who post about religion are all about accepting what their lot in life is and stating it's God's plan. Men post sermons that seem to be developmental stories about how they are able to contain all their venal temptations because of God's love.

My favorite blog is one that is highly personal; honest and revelatory. When reading these I feel I am having a conversation with them, and doing more listening than talking.

Blogging can be a kind of therapy, I think.

Taking your friends with you.

There's an icicle outside my window and today there was sun. Temperatures were below freezing, except it would seem, for at least a moment when the weather heads measured and found it to be exactly 32. The sun and the "heat" melted the icicle and tonight by the light of some solar lights along the walk, the icicle is a sparkle drape in front of my black backed glass.

Today my lover told me a story of a friend of his. He has known this man for over forty years. He told me that his friend has never married and has always had a single cat as a pet. When a cat dies he gets another. They're never a specific breed or color or type of hair. When his cat dies he has the pet cremated and has the ashes at home in a solid cherry urn.

When the friend dies his instructions are that the urns of his cats are to be buried with him. He will also be in a solid cherry box.

Looking at a skylight

Dear February,

I'm writing this to tell you my expectation of your month is right on target!

This is the month friends drive south for warm beach breezes. This year they found temperatures in the 30s and snow.

This is the month a picture of Churchill Downs during Derby week makes me cry.

Fifteen inches of snow in a southern city is deadly. Getting that snow in one and two inch increments only prolongs misery. As you can see by this picture, snow covers the skylights here. That's just rediculous!

What good is a skylight if you cannot see the sky?

Yours truly,
A Winter Weary Woman

Country Scents and Weeds

I drove back to the city from visiting a friend recently and from there to here or here to there, crops were growing like gangbusters. A green lush carpet of plantings and growings spread out as far as I could see on both sides of the road. I took back roads part of the way. In the city you can't smell growing things from a car window. But in the country in July the corn and soybeans growing smell is still fragrant.

Which got me to thinking about weeds and ways we deal with them these days.

That early month of March when the grass is still
Brown, a green blade or bright flower is welcome.
I’m thirsty for green and yellow, and every year
Delight in a field of dandelions and wild violets.

I remember my Mom most every month ‘till she
Surrendered again in July, using a rusty knife
That became a yard tool when one summer night
It was left on the step after cutting cucumbers.

Mom made war digging roots with that knife, laying
The defeated on old muslin sheets and then emptying
The bundle on the pile behind the chicken coop.
Every year they survived to fight her again and win.

Hours of most pretty spring days she would be seen
Digging weeds from the otherwise green of a long
Sloping lawn around our house in the country, in
Old dress, shoes and a bonnet; a vision in memory.

Moving to town, she seemed a wild woman to the townies.
She strung a clothes line out back and carved a garden
From the perfect green sod to grow vegetables on a
Smaller scale since she was alone. It did not thrive.

In that place no one dug their weeds, preferring to
Pay a tank truck driver to spray the grass with a lethal
Brew of poison that seemed to target only the weeds and
It would seem potatoes, tomatoes and mush melon.

July 19, 2009

Once Upon a Country, A Palestinian Life

I finished reading Once Upon a Country by Sari Nusseibeh. I bought this book shortly after it was published in 2007. I had read a review in the Saturday CJ and it sounded interesting. I’m always interested in personal history across the context of larger world events. It resided on the stack by the door for two years. Every time I had the choice of reading it or something else, I chose something else; even reading the Pentagon book first. I started reading the first of the month because I knew it would be in my mind and not talking to anyone daily, I’d not be bringing up the latest few pages in conversation. When I started the book I had read the fly leaf and reviews on the back cover and expected something that was hate filled and of violent speech. That’s not what I found.

First is the history of a family that has lived in Israel for over 1300 years. A family that owned a lot of land and was with its extended members spread all over the area. The child Sari is educated in all the best schools in Israel and England and America. But that in itself is not remarkable. Many people are well educated and revert back to stupidity.

The Nusseibeh family are trustees, according to tradition, for the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This fact would in itself be a story, however it is presented as a fact and not discussed, except to reveal how dedicated his family has been to peace in Jerusalem.

The story was that there were many Arabs living in that country who wanted peace, and have wanted it for a long time. It seemed that every time when the moderate peace lovers made contact with people on the other side who also wanted peace, the powers in charge of each side did whatever they could to force the other to use violence and repression to keep them from making peace. People were arrested, assassinated, put out of their homes or marginalized in some way that took what influence they had away.

An example was Ariel Sharon who supported the unpopular cleric Sheik Yessin. This man was the root of Hamas. When the peace lovers wanted Yasser Arafat to endorse non-violence from Fatah, he would just let the impetus sit and not react either way creating a void and power hungry factions stepped in.

Arafat was a man who was paranoid. However he got power he lived most of his life working to keep it. He paid off each faction that would try to supplant him. Therefore he was standing on an ever moving platform whose purpose was to keep balance, and thereby no real progress was made because all effort was put into keeping balance and remaining in power.

Sharon was similar in that he supported the most violent faction and at the same time, continued to push building settlements thereby forcing the Arabs into walled off communities. The Israeli Wall is similar to the Berlin Wall and will ultimately be as ineffective. Sharon gained power from being a reactionary to Arab violence which he had stirred up in supporting violent factions. A circle without end and the same reaction to the same push.

All through the story, Sari refers to Palestine. The thing is that geographic area has been known by that name for over a thousand years. Arabs and Jews lived in the country peacefully for over a thousand years. The Crusades, the British Mandate and Zionism as well as other efforts to “capture” Jerusalem is what brought violence to the country.

I’ve thought from the beginning of my consciousness about Israel and Palestine, that the Israelites have treated the Arabs as someone they can victimize. The Arabs have spent their efforts to get power yet there is no effort to be cohesive in their debate with Israel. Why one base of power when you can have 15! Therefore nothing of a single purpose gets done. Countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey try to get factions of Arab Palestinians to working for those countries, who after all will only use them as an arm of violence to kill the Jews in Israel.

Neither side of this conflict wants peace at least not the politicians. Sari's belief, and I believe he is right, knows the real power is with the people becoming the force that makes their governments make peace.

Sari is a philosopher in thought and action. He speaks of the will of the individual and how nothing is accomplished without that will. He is right.

I wonder if he will write another book as this one does not speak about the 2006 July war, nor his mother’s death or the country now that our administration has changed.