Fun With Phobias

Last night, Riff found a list of phobia names online. It made me think of a book I saw a few years ago in Bookshop Santa Cruz, The Pop-Up Book of Phobias. I know phobias can be debilitating, so I am not making fun of them or anything--it is just interesting to see all the different names. Here are some of the more creative ones, and you can follow the link to see many more:

air--anemophobia

ants--myrmecophobia

asymmetical things--asymmetriphobia

bald people--peladophobia

books--bibliophobia

bulls--taurophobia

celestial spaces--astrophobia

church--ecclesiophobia

clowns--coulrophobia

George Bush II--dubyaphobia (just kidding, that's mine)

gods--zeusophobia

gravity--barophobia

Halloween--Samhainophobia

infinity--aperiophobia

lawsuits--liticaphobia

mushrooms--mycophobia

Northern lights--auroraphobia

politicians--politicophobia

right side--dextrophobia

stories, myths, false statements--mythophobia

tyrants--tyrannophobia

undressing--dishabillophobia

ventriloquist's dummy--automatonophobia

wealth--plutophobia

x-rays--radiophobia

yellow color--xanthophobia


It makes me wonder how these names get standardized--is there a Committee for the Naming of Phobias out there?

The Wild Shrug

I have finished my Arachne Shrug (the pattern is from the Knitting Goddess book, which can be viewed by clicking on the link). I had a lot of fun with this pattern, leaving off the bobbles from the original (which are little raised dots of yarn), as I felt this would look too Klingon for my tastes, and adding a crocheted collar and hem, which cannot be seen terribly well in this picture. Contrary to the photo, I do not have one arm; my dear daughter Prada posed me thus (I also have a serious case of "yoga hair," as I had just gotten back from yoga class). This photo is taken in the Holy Strega's Lair, my downstairs office, with its altar to goddesses, angels, and ancestors, its walls of masks and Day of the Dead banners, its artifacts of a childhood returned to me from an ocean of grief and forgetfulness. This is a place where tarot cards are read, candles lit, rituals devised, prayers rise like luminous petals, my children come to me for advice, for a story, for a mother's love, where Mr. Strega and I steal kisses in the middle of a busy day.

I am glad to have finished this shrug, the very first real garment I have ever made, on a day of winter letting everyone know that it is not quite done with Santa Cruz. Wind roared through the canyon this morning, waking me, and a branch blocked my front door. Lately, the days carry with them the promise of a slow, hot summer to come, or they offer up a remembrance of frozen months, like a cameo of ice and rain. Clouds flew over the sky, hastening to somewhere along with a flock of ravens, and our cherry tree lost handfuls of petals like unmeltable snow. I remembered something I read, that a knitter sometimes weaves a part of their soul into a garment, and I hoped for that, a single thread of spirit caught in the tangled fibers.

"Om" means "Wow"

My yoga teacher Delana said this morning that "om" basically means "wow!" Now, that's a new translation to me! She also reads sutras to us and today read sutras on friendliness and compassion, and not being competitive. She also said something funny when I was in a backbend that made me crack up--it is a very strange experience to laugh in that position. I like this class a lot--it's held at Gold's Gym in Santa Cruz,so we get to hear all the conversations of people working out. One woman, just outside the door, kept describing her allergies, in detail, and said, "This weird weather is DRIVING MY ALLERGIES CRAZY! First it's like spring, then it's like fall. Spring! Fall! Spring! Fall! It's like the weather just can't decide what it wants to be!" My teacher got up and turned up her music at that point.

I am getting a lot better at yoga--when I first started, I was amazed at all the little islands of pain throughout my body, especially in my feet, hips, and shoulders. Shoulders are still a problem, but my balance is a hundred times better, and I am slowly losing my fear of falling over. It's hard not to feel competitive with 18,000 buff people working out within sight of my class, but I am getting better at it.

I just realized that if you combine "om" with "wow" and mix it up a little, you get "mow." Strange thoughts promenade in my mind after yoga; it must have something to do with all the blood rushing to my head when I am upside down.

gloves

Here are the hippie-bohemian-"I write in a garret" gloves I knitted awhile back. It's from the One Skein Wonders book, and the pattern (which you can't see very well due to the variegated yarn) is called "Broken Wave." The yarn is Noro Silver Thaw (a yarn I bought as much for the name as the colorway). Even though the gloves are fingerless, they are quite warm and not at all itchy. And I like that they have violet in them. These gloves have a lot of "Strega's Story" mileage on them, as I wore them to write in my occasionally cold house this winter.

That's all for today, unless something happens (probably you can tell it's a bit of a lazy Saturday at the Ponderosa).

Four Years at War

The four-year anniversary of the Iraq war has recently passed. I find that I often refrain from speaking of the war here, but today I just wanted to share a musical commentary which encapsulates what I hope will come to pass as more and more people wake up to senselessness and madness of this seemingly-without-end conflict. Click on the link (which is magically contained within the three colorful dots next to this entry's title) to hear it (it can take a second or two to load, but it's worth it, trust me).

Happy First Day of Spring

Hurrah! It's the first day of Spring. Winter slips under the sill of brightness and green opens everywhere. I finish up my garden planting this week, a wave of cosmos, morning glories, tomatoes, zinnias, larkspur, and sunflowers, the black seeds buried, waiting for transformation.

On Pacific Avenue, the cherry trees wear sea foam blossoms, palest pink; I went to my usual Wednesday Peets noon writing session today--decaf coffee, not Irish Breakfast or Russian Caravan, and a chocolate-dipped biscotti. The homeless man who always says his mother is Grace Kelly, over and over, had just walked out, and a woman with beautiful silver hair stood next to me in line.

Bleary-eyed from dank dreams over the past two nights of a person I once knew, coming to me in dreamscapes to torment and harm, I needed to sit and write, to exorcise the slime of nightmare from my day. We were friends during a time such as this, when spring opened like a heart of light over the redwoods, ocean, creeks, and ponds of this coastal town. This was a friend who finally showed his true nature, as if he were a beloved tree growing for years in my sight, going through seasons of rain and sun, until suddenly the rotten center was revealed, a core of degradation. I remind myself that this person does not have the power to harm me or my family anymore. I remind myself that this person is one of the "still suffering" ones in this world, trapped in a nightmarescape.

So, I drank coffee today, unhurried, wrote with turquoise ink--the same ink I've been writing with since I was eighteen years old--filling three more pages of my Morning Pages journal. Grateful to have slipped out from under a frozen cloak of winter, grateful for one more season alive on this earth, grateful for the presence of love and good things in my life. How quickly the most murky picture changes with gratitude's slightest touch.

missing Boy Scout found

It's really good to see a news story like this, one that didn't end in tragedy for the family. It's to this kid's credit that he had some idea of how to survive in the woods, as it was extremely cold at night. Kudos to the rescue teams, too!

I like seeing stories such as this one, as it makes me remember that good things happen in the world all the time, despite everything.

for the Python-impaired

Some denizens of my household who have read the post on the Kombucha dress did not get the Monty Python blancmange reference, so there may be a few readers out in Blogville who might not understand the reference. It comes from the Monty Python's Flying Circus skit entitled "You're No Fun Anymore," and I have included a link to the Wikipedia article which illumines all things blancmange.

Kombucha Dress

Do y'all remember kombucha, touted as a health booster, which is basically made using a weird yeasty kombucha starter and grown in a medium of strong black tea and sugar? It ferments up into a vinegary tonic with a mild effervescence. It's supposed to be good for what ails ya; I actually have a bottle of it from New Leaf Market and toss a bit into my green tea from time to time, to keep myself a proper Santa Cruzan. I once, summers ago, made my own kombucha, and did a great job of it--except that it was necessary to save the yeasty kombucha starter thing to make other batches, and it unfortunately looked like the unholy spawn of a latex glove and a tree fungus. As the kombucha creature grew in size, Mr. Strega became increasingly worried as I had to use ever-larger jars to hold it. Finally, he began to worry that it would become like the Blancmange from Monty Python, so we gave it a proper burial and I decided to leave kombucha-brewing to others with greater wisdom, experience, and storage space.

Well, now you can have sort of a kombucha dress (the link has a picture of a lady wearing the kombucha dress; it is probably not for the eyes of kids, as it is clingy--and it's just such a weird picture on so many levels). Apparently some intrepid person has learned to create dresses from "cellulose woven by bacteria in a vat of fermenting wine." Even worse, the cellulose mats are molded around a blow-up doll to form the dress. As Mr. Strega said in an entirely different context, "You just have to wonder how a process like that evolved." Ferment-to-order garments aren't exactly the fashion innovation I've been waiting for.

yet another bellydance performance

My troupe, Dancers of the Crescent Moon, performed at Rakkasah today. I had nine hours of sleep last night, so I was rested and calm for the performance. I think it went well overall--my sword roll went well (where I go from a kneeling to reclining position, and roll all the way over with the sword still on my head--sort of like doing the cobra position in yoga and then rolling over); my troupe leader, me, and another troupe member do that particular thing, and we got applause for it.

It's a lot of preparation for these venues, and I am beat. Still, I'm so happy to be performing--a part of me loves to be onstage with something that has absolutely nothing to do with my writing, though the physical health and strength I get from studying dance. Plus, Rakkasah has a great stage, which (believe me) is important to someone dancing around with a big sword on her head.

So, not a very scintilliating post today (because I'm beat), but I wanted to brag on my sword dance a little.

Goodnite.

the Irish soda bread at the end of the universe

The Ponderosa's kitchen is filled with the fragrance of baking, for I promised my son Riff real Irish soda bread this morning (he walked upstairs to show me he was truly in the mood for St. Patrick's Day, having donned a green-t-shirt, green button-down shirt and, he told me, green boxers). Last night, my friend Ellen brought real Irish soda bread to my writing group--unadorned with currants, Irish whiskey, dried fruit, or caraway seeds, just soda bread in its pure simplicity, with real Irish butter on the side. I wished for a hot cup of PG Tips tea to go with it (my British friend Shai at the Mountain Roasting Company in Felton turned me on to PG tips when, bleary-eyed one morning, I ordered a cup of Twining's English Breakfast from him and he said, "You know, that's not really tea. Try this." And I've been hooked ever since).

So, on this sunny and grand afternoon, I looked online and found a recipe for soda bread from County Kerry. I had to substitute plain yogurt for the 14 oz. of buttermilk the recipe called for, but I did all the other things the recipe said, including slashing the top with a cross to keep the devil away. It baked into the most lovely bread, with a rough and lovely golden crust. Riff ate half of it--I promised more for dinner.

Our dinner is traditional corned beef and cabbage, the corned beef part of which is stewing right now on the stove, in our biggest pot over a low flame. My mother made the best corned beef and cabbage I ever tasted, cooked for hours and hours and eaten with a touch of mustard--the very strangeness of being able to put mustard on my dinner made it rather interesting (it was usually reserved for baloney sandwiches). I always wanted to eat this on some other day than Saint Patrick's day, but I don't think we ever did.

So, happy Saint Paddy's to all my faithful readers. Today, I'll be grafting the sleeves of the shrug I just finished knitting, taking a walk with Mr. Strega, working on my book, and doing a wee bit of gardening. I am extremely happy to say that, due to the many prayers, cajoling, offerings to garden devas, howlings under the full moon, and propitiating the gods in general, my lilac finally has flower buds on it. I tend to try and grow things that really ought not to grow in my odd zone--but then, my life runs on equal parts faith and magical thinking.

Another acceptance, happy dance!

I just got an acceptance today from White Pelican Review in Florida and am doing the happy dance (they took two poems). I took an entire month last June to get my sending-out process back in order, and got all the unpublished poems, essays, and excerpts from my book back in circulation. It paid off with two acceptances so far, and a lot of the work has not yet come back (which used to mean something maybe ten years ago--if the work was out for more than three or four months, I started crossing my fingers--but no more. I've even had an increasing number of places, not many but a certain amount, simply never send work back. That sucks and is rude in Stregaland.

Speaking of poems, I was going through my old computer and found the love poems Mr. Strega wrote me when we were first together (he's the left brain of the Strega conjunction, but he's actually a decent creative writer as well--which of course made me smile at the irony of how easily writing comes to him, because he doesn't have himself wrapped up in it like I do, I think--and therefore I sweat every word). These poems deserve to be printed out and put in a box with dried roses and old elbow-length gloves and dance cards, whatever those were. They belong to an era when people waltzed in the afternoon to look proper, but drank absinthe after midnight's sleight-of-hand, chasing whatever visions the green fairy chose to impart.

Not that Mr. Strega and I drink absinthe, mind you--just the writer's dragging-into-place of Moulin Rouge props.

My mood is endorphin-soaked tonight because I moved as if possessed in my African dance class, until my clothes and hair were drenched. I swear, at one point, my feet felt like they didn't touch the ground. It's good for me to just go into wild mode once a week and get all the tension out to the beat of the best drummers in Santa Cruz.

And thus I bid all my faithful readers goodnight.

Cat's Cradle

Working on straightening out long-neglected piles of books, I find something my younger daughter Kat bought for me years ago: a copy of the Klutz Press Cat's Cradle book, complete with an unused rainbow nylon string. Prada has been home for two days, having no school early in the week, so she comes home sometimes to take a yoga class with me and to recharge and eat homecooked meals.

Prada saw the Cat's Cradle book and we spent hours remembering all the patterns from her childhood: Cup and Saucer, Eiffel Tower, Siberian Houses, Witch's Broom. My son Riff wandered in, said, "Hey, I used to know all these," and spent time recreating the intricate twisted ladders and loops of The Jacob's Ladder, the one he told me is the pattern everyone wants to remember, because it seemed hardest. Kat came home from work, took one look at the cat's cradle string, and without hesitation, whipped through every pattern as if a whole ocean of years had not passed between the time of her childhood and her young adulthood. Mr. Strega walked in and did the actual game of Cat's Cradle, moving from "Cat's Cradle" to "The Soldier's Bed" to "Candles" to
"The Manger" to "Diamonds" and finally to "Cat's Eye." He said his older sister recruited him to play Cat's Cradle, time and time again. Mr. Strega has only his sister as his immediate relative--his fiery, red-haired mother, who knitted and read, who was a physicist, who cooked from the I Hate to Cook Book, died before he met me, as well as his dad, the one who built him a sailboat (the "Porous Icthyosaurus") when Mr. Strega was little; he learned to sail it solo by the time he was eleven.

These last few days, I have been telling myself to try not to regret the times I should have been better as a mother, in the years I made other people my Higher Power and listened over and over to what they thought was good for me, nodding my head in blind belief. I am glad for the years in which I had no relationships, even though I was lonely; after having left an unbelievably toxic and dysfunctional post-divorce relationship, I spent many years on my own, caring for my kids, concentrating on getting physically and mentally healthy, working on my writing, ultimately gaining the self-esteem to get my MFA, and, at the beginning of grad school, to finally find Mr. Strega, the absolute love of my life. And now Prada says, "You are the best role model for me, Mom," and I feel better, though I can never undo the past and still wish I had done things differently--I wish, for one thing, I had not had any relationships at all after my marriage ended, but had spent time instead finding help through the channels I use now. I did not know I would be targeted by the very nature of my own vulnerablity and my willingness to blindly trust.

I don't know why doing Cat's Cradle brought all this up, only that it's an old game for my children and me, the patterns and shapes that emerge like magic from one simple unbroken string, reminding me of the complex ties that bind us as parent and children, the fragile Jacob's Ladder of our lives.

Notes for a Daylight Savings Day

When I was a kid, I thought Daylight Savings was magic, that there was a guy with a big clock someplace and he would pull a lever and re-set the time. I'm proud to say that my magical thinking is much more refined than when I was a kid, but it still seems interesting that time can sort of be manipulated (I just showed this to Mr. Strega, hoping he would discourse on "the arrow of time," but he told me what I said was somewhat true. He also told me it is possible to freeze light, to bend time into space and vice-versa, and that transmitting information outside of a 'light cone, whatever that is, also manipulates time). "Can we put light into ice trays and make light cubes?" I ask him.

Now the guy has pulled the Daylight Savings lever earlier in the year than he usually does, and I will no longer have to walk to my evening dance and yoga classes in the dark. It means my summer dance venues in my heavy Dancers of the Crescent Moon costume will be massively hot in ways I don't plan. It means my garden will, in just a few weeks, begin to break into color, hold light in the cup of each blossom.

You know it's summer in my town when the Pink Umbrella Man changes his hat of rose-colored fake fur for a straw one and leaves off his fuzzy magenta leggings on his daily journey of slowness and brightness, a pink Shiva, his walk the dance that keeps the heart of Santa Cruz thrumming. You know it's summer when the White Raven stays open 'til seven, the locals discoursing on their past lives as medieval emperors and warrior princesses, opining about corporate evil and the subtle effects of electromagnetic radiation, pausing to gaze long and thoughtfully at the screens of their laptops until the barista stacks chairs around them and swishes a broom under their feet, signaling the end of another day.

Every year, I say I'm taking a break from the garden, but in truth, I'm probably going to end up like Stanley Kunitz, gardening until I am 101, my hair in a long white braid down my back. Next to me is a bag of seed packets; today, a little late, the sweet peas go in. I love what sweet peas do--make magical scent so that when people step out into my garden, they are enveloped in a fragrant wave...so much so that I inadvertently bought seven packets of these climbers: rose pink Mammoth Choice, Cupid, Pastel Sunset, Watermelon, Jet Set, Old Spice Blanche Ferry, Blue Celeste. I'm the person who dreams over seed packets when winter freezes the landscape into harsh neutrals.

So, instead of grumping about the early time change, I will go out today and clean off winter's detritus from the back deck--fallen branches, piles of cuttings from the freeze, geraniums and succulents not yet showing any leaves. In the garden, the writer in me dreams and plans, the man I love beyond measure, the true love I found at 42, kneels down to pull weeds next to the place where the ancient wild lilac fell during a hard rain. It put out silvery blooms for years, a little less each season, until one morning he told me it split and fell during the night. Cut and stacked now for next years' kindling, and I plan another lilac in its place. I can't stop the arrow of time as it pierces our lives, taking us each day towards an inevitable and final winter: but I can decorate the journey, gathering life into my hands like soil and unplanted seeds, all their potential ready to be wakened.

Editorial concerning the Asha Veil case

I was re-reading my Valley Press this evening after a marvelous day of writing with a dear friend. I don't know why I missed this particular article. It is on Page 6 of this week's Valley Press--again, you need Acrobat Reader or a program that can read .pdf files to access it, but it is well worth it. I concur with a lot of the frustration expressed in the article. As I said yesterday, I feel that a break is coming in this case. I hope so.

New article on Asha Veil case in the Valley Press

Spring is coming to the San Lorenzo Valley, heralded first by daffodils and fruit trees--first the flowering plums, and then the rest, white blossoms just beginning to show, bridal colors that seem to have appeared overnight.

Six months ago, in September 2006 summer was still hanging on, though autumn was beginning to make itself known with colder nights and a certain golden aura in the afternoon light. In this month, a woman named Asha Veil died, along with her unborn daughter, Anina. They were left like trash by the side of Love Creek Road, a street that goes back and back into the redwoods, bounded on all sides by still-visible evidence of a two-decades-old landslide. There were no answers at the time to the mystery of her tragic death. Her baby would have been a few months old right now, eyes open to this budding, blue-sky spring. Perhaps her mother would have started telling Anina all the names for everything around them, showing her the new spring flowers. Instead...well, everyone knows what the terrible "instead" is. I don't need to recap it further here.

This week, the Valley Press has brought up the case again. It is somewhat hard to read the article in the way it's set up--click on the link to get the article in PDF form (you have to have Adobe Reader or a program that can read .pdf files to see this). It's a bit of a pain; please email me if you can't access the article and I'll see if I can get it to you another way.

People who are not privy to the workings of the criminal investigation are no closer to knowing who killed Asha Veil than we were the night she was found. The article states that "investigators have been unusually secretive. They've disclosed nothing about how Veil was killed, what physical evidence they have, what interviews have been conducted, and whether investigators know who fathered Veil's unborn daughter."
Phil Wowak, one of the primary investigators, says he "can hardly wait for the day we can make an announcement"--I assume about a suspect or a break in the case--and that "no one has been ruled out" as a suspect. He said that one real problem in moving this case forward has been a backlog at the state forensics lab, where evidence in the Asha Veil case was sent. The article goes on to discuss details of the Michael McClish case, in which McClish, Asha's coworker, was arrested on rape charges; his trial begins in April, if there are no further delays. As yet, the McClish and Veil cases remain unrelated, according to the criminal investigation.

So, we wait. I have a feeling--just an intuitive one--that we will know much more in the next few months. The part which really saddens me is that the suspect is out there, somewhere. This person knows who they are; they know they have an innocent woman's blood on their hands. They know Asha's baby will never see this beautiful, tremulous spring, these warm days just beginning to open, like a blossom of light. I doubt Asha's killer reads this blog, but if they just happen to do so--if they troll the Internet, hoping she's on the verge of vanishing from memory, please know that Asha is still very much on the minds of people who knew and loved her, and of everyone affected by this case. And, just in case you have some opportunity to read my words, I have a thought: why not lay down the burden of this terrible secret you carry and tell the investigators now what you've done? The knowledge of your actions must torment you, night and day. Maybe a nightmare wakes you, an image of what you've done rising out of the dark tide of restless sleep. You must feel how the circle is tightening around you, a little more every day You know you'll be found out, and soon. You've had six months of anonymity, but this isn't going to last, and you know it. The words are on your lips anyway, all the time. They have to be. Speak, and let this anguish rest, for everyone.

That's all I have to say tonight. I will be continuing to cover this case, and the McClish case, until there is resolution for both. And I will continue to remember the two precious human beings at the very heart of this story, Asha and Anina, their voices and all their future tragically stilled six months ago.

Oh my God, La Strada!

La Strada (The Road), considered to be one of Fellini's masterpieces, was on TV last night. Please click on the link to see Roger Ebert's review of La Strada, which gives both an excellent summary of the film and some good insight into Fellini's work.

I caught the tail end of the movie as I went downstairs last night to watch the tube and knit. It was surreal to see a film that my mother and grandmother both revered, and that I had not seen since I was a young teenager. I did not understand all the nuances of the film when I was young, but I was horrified even then at the treatment of Gelsomina, (the character played by Fellini's wife, Guilietta Masina), by Zampano (played by Anthony Quinn) who literally buys her from her mother to take her on the road with her as his assistant in his strongman act. The scenes of small Italian towns, roads full of rocks and dust, and the country and seaside locations made a deep impression on me. When this movie was showing on TV, my mother would announce it as if Christ were making an appearance: "La Strada's on tonight!" She would generally give a running commentary as we watched: "Now he's driven her crazy...Look, he's leaving her, all by herself...How does he expect her to take care of herself, crazy like that?...See, now he regrets what he did, and it's too late."

Though I was only able to watch a little of the movie last night, I can understand a bit more now of La Strada's appeal to my mother and grandmother: the waif-like woman abused by the man she belongs to (they're not married in the film, though Gelsomina is passed off as Zampano's wife). Gelsomina gets a couple of opportunities to escape, but she remains with a man who brutalizes and degrades her because she thinks she loves him (and then, of course, grows to fear him). Yet, in the end, Zampano has a breakdown on a cold, deserted beach, crying with remose as stark black-and-white waves roll in. Even though the movie is really over-the-top as only a Fellini movie can be, I came away from it deeply moved by the images and the acting, which affected me almost as much as when I was a kid.

Stephen Hawking and Zero Gravity

It was refreshing to see physicist Stephen Hawking in the news; I've long been an admirer of Hawking and can actually understand many of the things he discusses in A Brief History of Time (after re-reading the illustrated version over the years). I have actually seen his famous notes on various scientific-theory bets in the hallway of Cal Tech during a grand tour with Mr. Strega.

Next month, Hawking and other passengers will be flown in a specially modified Boeing 727 to experience several seconds of zero gravity. This flight is in preparation for a sub-orbital space flight on Virgin Galactic, in celebration of Hawking's 65th birthday. I wish him many, many blessings on what I fervently hope are wonderful experiences for him.

I was deeply moved by something in the article that has personal meaning for me as someone who has lived for many years with lupus. Hawking says he is embarking on these adventures to encourage public interest in spaceflight, and also to show that "people need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit."

'Nuff said.