While I eat lunch, I am reading an anthology of short stories written by a friend. I usually read while I eat and while I’m waiting for sleep to come. I go through several books a month. I guess that means I eat frequently or suffer from insomnia. Actually, each is true to some extent.
Even back in college, I was intimidated by this writer-friend’s erudition. “Erudition.” That really is the perfect word for just how broad and deep his learning is. And it’s reflected in the narration of many of his stories, which assumes that the reader has at least heard of the great philosophers and writers whose works populate a good liberal education. The characters in these tales, however, run the gamut — from auto mechanics and health care workers to college students and professors. They are stories that are inclusive of age, race, marital status, and economic realities. They are stories about life as experienced by a narrator (and it is not always the same one) who is attuned to the nuances of the moment.
For me, in every story, it is the voice of the narrator that catches and guides my attention.
And that is the very reason why I feel compelled to muse about reading short stories written by a friend whose path periodically keeps crossing mine. He uses names and characters that are familiar to us both, events that coincide with what I know of his life. He is the writer; but is he always the narrator?
While, as his friend, I am enticed to wonder about the origins of these details, the truth is that it doesn’t matter to me, the reader. He is writing from his own experiences, recreating and rearranging them to suit his fiction. It’s what good writers do.
Despite knowing that, I can’t help wondering which details really happened. Did his young family really get evicted out of their apartment the day before one Christmas (as happens in one of my favorite stories in his last anthology)? I guess I can always ask him, and I probably will. (I tend to think that, while the characters in the story are drawn from his life, the situation probably isn’t.) His answer will not change my enjoyment of the story, but it will satisfy my “friendly” curiosity.
Finally, his stories bring to my mind lyrics from “Circles,” one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums by now-gone Mary Travers:
There’s no straight lines make up my life,
and all my roads have bends.
There’s no clear-cut beginning,
and, so far, no dead ends.
(Just like this blog — which, I assure you — is totally non-fiction.)
I didn’t take the advice of friends and family and went ahead and bought a brand of computer that turned out to be the mother of all lemons. It had problems from day one, but, a persistent bitch that I am, I kept calling the customer service techs and kept getting each problem (I thought) taken care of. Until it finally totally crashed.
So, they sent an on-site repair person, who put in a new motherboard and hard drive.
Uh uh. Still no boot up.
I’m trying to get a refund but cannot seem to be put in touch with someone who can take care of that. (It’s a couple of weeks past the 30 days during which one can do a return.)
Today, I did what I should have done before I ordered the infernal machine and googled for complaints about that company. I found hundreds. Maybe even thousands.
So, I sent a letter to the company, enclosed copies of some of the complaints that I copied from just one website, and gave them a choice: give me a refund of the price of the computer and the service contract that I bought with it, or I’m going to war. Online. Virally. Maybe even with a youtube plea to that company to take pity on a poor old lady living on a retirement income. Certainly with a website that documents all of the thousand complaints about that company. And then I’ll tweet and fb the url. And I’ll file my own complaints on every consumer complaint site I can find.
I will become a thorn in their side, an enemy to the death — a hellcat of an old lady whom they wish they had never met.
I might be old, but I’m internet smart and know how to use it as a weapon in my defense.
Unless they refund all of my money and email me the UPS postage to send the damned thing back; then I’ll back off. As the Tao de Ching says — “no fight, no blame.”
But if they don’t — well, did I ever tell you that Xena is my idol?
ADDENDUM: Actually, the retailer from whom I bought it has just about as many complaints. Maybe I’ll make this fight a two-fer.
I don’t run. I walk with my eyes closed, holding onto the bar that measures my heart rate. I up the incline a little. Up the speed. Little by little.
I like walking with my eyes closed, but I can’t do that out in the street, where I would probably fall and break a hip. But it works here, in the exercise room at the Jewish Community Center, where it’s never crowded and the mirrors never reflect any hot young and toned females reminding me that’s it’s been a half-century since I was one of those.
I am meditating on my new gravatar, and I know that if I were a half-century younger, I would have my own mythic Avatar. She would probably look at lot like Xena.
I would be a player. Or, more accurately, a gamer. I actually don’t know much at all about gaming, but I “know” some interesting gamers because I follow them on Twitter — because my son follows them on Twitter.
There’s a whole subculture out there of gamers — of bright, creative younger people who Tweet and FB and blog and tumblr and instagram and flickr and all of those oddly spelled connective mechanisms that people my age usually have to look up on Wikipedia.
I’ve become a real fan of Felicia Day, a young woman of so many talents and creative projects that she takes my breath away. There’s no point in trying to describe her here, since her website has all the relevant information. You really should check out her funky youtube video of her song “Don’t You Want to Date My Avatar.” I’ve even gotten sucked into watching her , The Guild. It’s like I live on another planet from these creatives.
So, I’m on the treadmill, meditating, sort of, on being who I am. Not a gamer. Not even a player. Just a little old lady whose heart rate is up to 135 and I do, indeed, need to take a breath.
I open my eyes and look straight into the mirror into the mirrored eyes of a really good looking gray haired guy, who is working out at one of the machines in front of my treadmill. He smiles. He can’t be smiling at me, I think, but I smile back anyway.
Later, as I get up from the ab-crunching machine, he’s standing nearby, cooling off. He obviously takes this exercise thing a lot more seriously than I do. At least I get that impression from his trim physique and the gym shorts and fingerless gloves he is wearing. “This is a good time to come here,” he says to me. (It’s just a little after noon on a Sunday, and the place is almost empty.)
“Yes,” I say, smiling back. “Except it’s such a nice day out there. It’s a good day to be outside.” (Duh! What kind of a response is that??) For a minute we talk about the weather. I move on to the recumbent bike. He moves onto the the free weights.
Now I’m pedaling and thinking about the fact that I have no makeup on and barely ran a comb through my hair before I left home. I don’t come to the gym to meet men; I come to try and get my cholesterol under control and increase my stamina.
I’ve been making fresh basil (from my garden) pesto and now I put it in just about everything except desserts.
You can find lots of recipes for basil pesto on the web (and all of them work fine), but I like my own the best — I use Basil, walnuts, honey, some fresh parsley, a lot less parmesan cheese than usually called for, and a little more garlic.
I put in on fish instead of tartar sauce. I even add it to V8 juice and my homemade gazpacho. I mix it with a little mayonaise and lemon juice and use it as salad dressing or a dip. The Food Network as a great list of 50 things to make with pesto.
And a basil pesto addiction is a really healthy one to have.
Accoring to here:
Basil has more phytochemicals than vegetables, has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidants effects, protects the chromosomes and cells from damage, is good for digestion and stomach problems, and contains these minerals:
magnesium that helps relax heart and blood vessels.
calcium
potassium
iron
vitamin C
vitamin A to protect cell damage
vitamin K for coagulant factors in the blood and strengthening of the bones
As far as I’m concerned, the more garlic you add to the pesto the better. Garlic can lower your blood pressure decrease triglycerides and the bad cholesterol (LDL) and increasing the good cholesterol (HDL) The sulphur compounds in garlic can help with inflammations that may be causing arthritis or asthma. The sulphur compounds also act as antibacterial and antiviral agent. That is why they recommend eating garlic to keep colds away.
According to here:
The phytonutrient in garlic, called allicin, may help you maintain or even lose weight. Garlic gives great taste to all meals and can be added in all meals, sauces, stews, dips like hummus, guacamole, and mashed potato. You can even add it to a raw fresh delicious juice or smoothie. (Um, I think I draw the line at the smoothie thing.)
I add parsley for lots of reasons. According to this, parsley contains:
— myristicin, an organic compound found in the essential oil of parsley, not only inhibits tumor formation (especially in the lungs), but also activates the enzyme glutathione-S-transferase, which helps the molecule glutathione attach to, and fight against, oxidized molecules. Myristicin can also neutralize carcinogens like benzopyrene in cigarette smoke that can pass through the body, consequently fighting against colon and prostate cancer.
— an antioxidant arsenal that includes luteolin, a flavonoid that searches out and eradicates free radicals in the body that cause oxidative stress in cells. Luteolin also promotes carbohydrate metabolism and serves the body as an anti-inflammatory agent. Furthermore, two tablespoons of parsley contain 16% of the RDA of vitamin C and over 12% of the RDA of vitamin A – two powerful antioxidants.
— luteolin and vitamin C, which serves as an effective anti-inflammatory agent within the body. When consumed regularly, they combat the onset of inflammatory disorders, such as osteoarthritis (the degeneration of joint cartilage and the underlying bone) and rheumatoid arthritis (a disease causing inflammation in the joints).
— folate (or vitamin B90, which helps convert homocysteine into harmless molecules. A regular garnish of parsley can help ward off cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attack, stroke, and atherosclerosis.
— vitamin K, which is necessary for the synthesis of osteocalcin, a protein that strengthens the composition of our bones. Vitamin K also prevents calcium build-up in our tissue that can lead to atherosclerosis, cardiovascular disease and stroke. The vitamin K found in parsley (wo tablespoons of parsley have a whopping 153% of the RDA of vitamin K) is essential for synthesizing sphingolipid, the fat needed to maintain the myelin sheath around our nerves, and therefore our nervous system as a whole.
Parsley is the best weapon against garlic breath. That’s why many recipes that include garlic also include parsley. Chewing parsley with your garlicky meal seems to contain the problem to some extent.
But it’s not enough to just sprinkle a little parsley on top of what you’re eating. You need to chew at least one sprig of fresh parsley, ideally more, with your meal. Chop up a sprig of fresh parsley or two and add it to the meal somewhere, or put it on the plate as a garnish.
In case you’e wondering, here’s why I make my basil/parsley/garlic/honey pesto with walnuts:
Walnuts, a rich source of the omega-3 fat, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), improve artery function after a high fat meal and may be even more important in a Mediterranean-type diet than olive oil in promoting heart health, suggests a small study from Spain (Cortes B, Nunez I, J Am Coll Cardiol).
HONEY, a most assimilable carbohydrate compound, is a singularly acceptable, practical and most effective aliment to generate heat, create and replace energy, and furthermore, to form certain tissues. Honey, besides, supplies the organism with substances for the formation of enzymes and other biological ferments to promote oxidation. It has distinct germicidal properties and in this respect greatly differs from milk which is an exceptionally good breeding-ground for bacteria. Honey is a most valuable food, which today is not sufficiently appreciated. Its frequent if not daily use is vitally important.
Do you wanna dance and hold my hand? Tell me baby I’m your lover man Oh baby, do you wanna dance?
Well do you wanna dance under the moonlight? Squeeze and kiss me all through the night
Oh baby, do you wanna dance?
Do you do you do you do you wanna dance Do you do you do you do you wanna dance?
Do you do you do you do you, do you wanna dance
Well do you wanna dance under the moonlight? Squeeze me baby all through the night
Oh baby, do you wanna dance?
Do you do you do you do you wanna dance Do you do you do you do you wanna dance?
Do you do you do you do you wanna dance
A dozen years ago, I was dancing three or more nights a week — Latin, ballroom, in studios, in nightclubs — and keeping my cholesterol down and stamina up.
Now I have an “assist rail” on the side on my bed because I tend to roll off at night while tossing and turning trying to get comfortable despite sciatica.
I miss dancing, so I did a little google search for ballroom dancing in my area. And I found a couple of places about a 20 minute drive away. I miss dancing, but I don’t miss the “competition” for dance partners. And I’m realy out of shape in terms of stamina. My knees aren’t what they used to be either.
So I’m asking myself, do I really, really wanna dance or would I rather do some other kind of exercise that doesn’t require driving at night and being reminded that I’m not the person I was a dozen years ago.
I think I wanna dance, but what I really want is to have the life I had all those years ago. And that’s not going to happen.
What I need is to keep taking the gentle yoga class once a week and try ramping up to some kind of low-impact aerobics. What I need is to keep finding ways to meet new people, find some new friends.
What I want is to be the person I was 15 years ago who could do a jive performance and not limp away after.
My woodchuck totem is a metaphor, a symbol, a visual representation some part of me that is “woodchuck-like.” (See earlier post.) She arrived as my totem animal for my third chakra, offering to be my metaphorical guide along my current meandering path. Whether the woodchuck chose me or I chose the woodchuck is irrelevant to how the metaphor might empower my thinking and feeling. That’s how these things work.
is located in the region of the navel, and is represented by the element of fire . The form is ….. triangular, the seed syllable is ram. It is a ten-petaled lotus. This is the chakra of digestion[emphasis mine], manifestation and power. The ego can manifest itself for good or harm through the power of the navel chakra. It is the one that gives us the sense of generosity, complete satisfaction and contentment.
Whether such a chakra physiologically exists or not is irrelevant, although….
Regardless of whether you believe in chakras, and whether you’re convinced by the ideas in the pages that follow, the journey offers its own reward, introducing a perspective sometimes lacking in our collective conversation.
Since the dawn of the 20th century, science has expanded in startling and important new directions. Chaos theory, quantum mechanics, genetics, cosmology, emergence, consciousness studies… All these disciplines have moved science forward, but they also hearken back to concepts and principles from the earliest days of recorded history.
The i-Ching’s 64 hexagrams correspond to the 64 informational sequences encoded into human DNA.iii The significance of this correspondence is subjective, but its existence is not. Spiral structures are embedded in the universe of physics, but they are also omnipresent in spiritual art and sacred geometry.iv Chaos theory provides a scientific framework for how everything is interconnected, a recurring theme in Eastern spiritual systems. The Eternal Tao is now considered relevant to everything from physics to corporate management… even Winnie the Pooh.v
You can vigorously debate the importance of these correspondences. You can endlessly argue about how specific principles play out in the real world, or how they don’t. But regardless of your world view, these parallel structures are important because they demonstrate that both sides of the divide are concerned with the same mysteries.
The article from which the above quote was taken is part of an unfinished book but is worth reading to get some idea of the connections between science and old spiritualities, between what we know as fact and how various spiritual traditions echo these facts in myth and metaphor.
For purposes of my current journey to get off generic Nexium and stabilize my digestive system, the third chakra becomes the mythic landscape though which I will metaphorically travel toward physical health, with my metaphorical woodchuck as my guide.
Thus is the mind/body connection. At least for someone like me for whom poetry and symbolism and metaphor and meditations have been known to work psychological magic.
An interesting aside I found out about charkras (on the site linked above) is about “The Void.”
Surrounding the second and the third chakra is the Void which stands for the principle of mastery (guru principle) within us. In many spiritual traditions, this area is the “ocean of illusions” that needs to be crossed with the help of a spiritual guide. When the Kundalini is awakened and passes through the Void, this principle of mastery is established within us. Thus, you become your own guru, your own spiritual guide since you can feel on your fingertips all your subtle problems and have the power to cure them using your own Kundalini. Moreover, establishing this center helps us get rid of all our habits, laziness, gross attachments, and everything that enslaves us in a way or another: we become our own master. Following false “gurus” who are more interested in power tricks or your purse can damage very much the Void area.
Finally, as I was searching aroundthe interwebs for information on woodchucks, googling for “woodchuck dance,” I found this post that is just delightful! (Makes me wonder what meaning that woodchuck metaphor might have had for that guy.)
It’s hard to kick-ass at age 71. And there really aren’t many role models out there for someone my age.
Oh, I don’t mean people who jump out of planes at age 100 or scuba dive at age 94. All of that is all well and good, but risking my life for fun has never been one of my turn-ons. My risks tend to be sendentary and verbal. (Like, that’s a surprise.) I guess that’s why I’m such a fan of contemporary television’s Harry’s Law. Now, there’s a role model for me (even though she’s youngER.)
Aside from good ol’ Granny Weatherwax, however, there are really no older fantasy kick-ass females, probably because older women are not considered sexy. Hell, we’re usually not even considered attractive by standard standards. And young, attractive, and sexy is what kick-ass females are “supposed” to be — or at least that’s what the fantasy sub-culture artists believe.
There’s a complex and intelligent online discussion about “sexy geek girls” going on among members of the fandom subcuture — the ones into who love fantasy writings, go to fantasy and comic conventions, and find it empowering to “cosplay.” (I’ll bet few of my readers know what that word means.) The worthwhile discussion is spinning off from a panel discussion at the recent San Diego Comic-Con called “Oh You Sexy Geek!”
The only reason I know about the convention or the panel is because I follow my son’s tweets, and he was a photographer there. And I’ve been tooling around the web leaving my comments here and there about my take — not on whether girl geeks are/can be/should be sexy, but rather what priority should (IMHO) flamboyant “sexiness” be for young women, geeks or not, fantasy or real.
I’m speaking/writing as a somewhat marginalized geeky female (71 years old) who has been a fan of powerful kick-ass, attractive (notice that I didn’t say “sexy”) female characters since I discovered the original Wonder Woman back in the 1940s. Halloween was my favorite holiday long before there was such a thing as cosplay because I could dress up as Barbaraella or Xena or a vampire (depending on the decade) and not be considered a fruitcake (now, there’s a dated word!) This whole discussion has drawn me in because I also fought in the feminist wave back in the 60s and learned much from the struggle of us females to balance the power of our sexuality with the power and respect that we deserve to have in the realms of social , political, and personal relationships. It’s a little too easy for us females to confuse limited sexual power with the other kinds, and, for whatever reasons, unenlightened males too often get off on all of the sexist implications of the Slave Leia kind of sexiness. And while being sexy is not a bad thing, it needs to be kept in perspective. An it’s not all all the same as “attractiveness,” although the two can overlap. I understand why male comic artists pander to the adolescent fantasies of pubescent males, but I nonetheless urge all of you attractive geek chicks to keep pushing for less emphasis on the visual sexiness of female comic book heroes and more on their strength, independence, and overall attractiveness. (At least more realistically proportioned and less exposed boobs and butts!) I look forward to watching the evolution of the geekgirl con, especially the panel on how to raise geeky kids. (Since I already seem to somehow have done that – both male and female. And they are both feminists as well.)
Anyway, to satisfy my curiosity, I did a search for “unattractive kick-ass female characters.” I found this one on this site:
I also suppose that I was spoiled by having the early Wonder Woman as my fantasy. There was only one like her, and she was a life-long positive inspiration for lots of the comic-addicted females of my generation. She inspired us to become the strong-voiced women we are today. I wonder if the sexy young geeks of this generation will feel that way about their current fantasy females 40 or 50 years from now.
A chubby woodchuck
in the middle of an empty parking lot,
stops to watch me walk in circles
around a June afternoon
awash in dandelion seeds
and gently dappled sky.
He twitches his nose,
ambles a few more steps
sits on his haunches,
rests his paws on his full belly –
a curious and patient and satisfied
Buddha.
“The soul needs its burrow,”
the woodchuck says,
“a warren to wend a way
through the solitary earth,
some private ground to hog,
a place safe to spend
that deep season of wonder.”
And, with a fanciful last twitch,
Buddha leaves the spotlight,
his coat a slow and sensuous shimmer
along the grave pavement.
Without looking back,
he disappears into the grasses
between the shadowy sumac,
leaving me to wonder
my own way in.
There are some things I will never understand, and one of them is why it seems so impossible for people to have strong convictions/beliefs without proselytizing.
Religious fundamentalists of all ilks are the big offenders, but I’m seeing more and atheists who are becoming similarly inclined. And it seems to me that there is a big difference between making one’s case/having an intelligent debate and trying to convert someone from her or his way of thinking to yours.
In truth, I’m a big fan of Pharyngula’s PZ Myers and Skepchick’s Rebecca Watson — both hard-nose atheists whose function in this larger world group of thinkers seems to be to press the offensive line of rationality against all who are against them. They are both incredibly brilliant, and, in that brilliance, incredibly arrogant. But, hey, they are so good at what they do that I enjoy the ride they take me on. (Watson’s clips on youtube are in-your-face riveting.) And they are not wrong in their analyses. But neither does that mean that they are all right.
Let’s face it. There will never be global agreement on why we are here and how we got here. Sometimes scientific evidence and religious beliefs might overlap. But usually their perceptions of reality are just too different.
I read somewhere recently something that explained that science is a way of knowing, and knowledge evolves as evidence is uncovered; religion is a way of believing, and faith/belief does not evolve.
There are many individuals who somehow can blend the two in a way that brings them both comfort and enlightenment. Deepak Chopra, one of them, recently wrote the following in his piece in the Huffington Post:
We often hear that humankind is on the verge of a major change in our perception of reality, a paradigm shift as it is called. But there’s no necessity for the new paradigm to break into laboratories and smash all the test tubes.
The brightest prospect is for an expanded science, one that takes consciousness into account. This is actually unfolding all around us. Even 10 years ago, a scientist who took consciousness seriously risked career suicide. He was likely to be rebuked with a common Physics slogan, “Shut up and calculate.” In other words, stop this foolish speculation and go back to what we trust — mathematics. But there is no getting around the bald fact that every human experience occurs in consciousness, including mathematics. If there is a reality beyond our awareness, by definition we will never know it. One branch of science after another, starting with the quantum revolution in physics a century ago, has been faced with mysteries that force it to consider consciousness. How does the brain produce thought? Why do genes respond when we interact or have experiences? Is biology a quantum phenomenon? Happily, there are now sizable conferences on these once unthinkable topics.
To be honest, I find the rantings of atheists more exciting and challenging then the writings of paradigm-shift philosophers. But that’s just me.
Like Walt Whitman, I’m just one big contradiction.
Because, in truth, I don’t get why we all can’t say “this is where I’m coming from, but/and, hey, whatever works for you is fine.” Of course, that all has to be in the context of some overarching values, such as “first, do no harm,” and “treat others the way that you want to be treated,” and “hey, you never know but you have to keep looking.”
I just don’t get what’s so hard about that.
Of course, proselytizing is what sells books, makes money, strokes egos, and earns notoriety. And there are lots of people who get off on that. And everyone needs to earn a living.
Finally, maybe it’s just that I’m getting old and am tired of the debate, and feel that, if you lead a life that is responsible to others and to the planet, what difference does it make what you “believe” on a religious or unreligious level.
And so, when I read something like the following, written by (much maligned scientist) Bruce Lipton in the Huffington Post I an inclined to hope his is right:
Humans evolved as the most powerful force in supporting Nature’s vitality. However, we have misused that power and are now paying the price for our destructive behavior.
The crises we face present us with the greatest opportunity in human history-conscious evolution. Through consciousness, our minds have the power to change our planet and ourselves. It is time we heed the wisdom of the ancient indigenous people and channel our consciousness and spirit to tend the Garden and not destroy it.
The story of human life on Earth is yet to be determined. Our evolution depends on whether we are willing to make changes in our individual and collective beliefs and behaviors, and whether we are able to make these changes in time. The good news is that biology and evolution are on our side. Evolution — like heaven — is not a destination, but a practice.
But I’m still a fan of PZ Meyers and Rebecca Watson, because while people like Lipton and Chopra are pulling at one end of the envelope, those other two and pushing at the other.
(for lack of anything else to say, I’m posting here a poem a day)
I asked my mother to give me roots.
She smiled and left the cord uncut,
its far end snaking through
a lineage of cords untouched.
I clawed against its tether,
searching desperately for swords.
I asked my father to give me wings.
He stood away,
arms pressed heavy to his sides.
“Fly, fly!” his strained voice cried.
I raised my naked arms
and walked into the wind.
I asked my husband to share
with me the things he knew
of roots and wings.
He showed me scars
where his own still pressed
from deep below old broken skin.
I stumbled away,
a stolen blade tucked in my boot.
I asked my lover to show me
what he thought of roots and wings.
He climbed upon a fence
and sat away the days.
So I called the stones
to coil at my feet,
sharpened my blade to womansword,
and carved a path that spiraled
through a horizontal rain.
And the roots became wings.
And the wings became roots.
And now I flow among the sands,
cold and knowing;
I rise, unbridled,
light among the dust.
I am meditating on my new 
