Re-reading

I read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut every few years. This paragraph haunts me, then and present. Present-time, the items would not be of German origin. 

"Now he was indoors, next to an iron cookstove that was glowing cherry red. Dozens of teapots were boiling there. Some of them had whistles. And there was a witches’ cauldron full of golden soup. The soup was thick. Primeval bubbles surfaced it with lethargical majesty as Billy Pilgrim stared. There were long tables set for a banquet. At each place was a bowl made from a can that had once contained powdered milk. A smaller can was a cup. A taller, more slender can was a tumbler. Each tumbler was filled with warm milk. At each place was a safety razor, a washcloth, a package of razor blades, a chocolate bar, two cigars, a bar of soap, ten cigarettes, a book of matches, a pencil, and a candle. Only the candles and the soap were of German origin. They had a ghostly, opalescent similarity. The British had no way of knowing it, but the candles and the soap were made from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the State. So it goes."

Update on Jeanne Burke

 There is an update on Jeanne Burke, who went missing in November. Her body was recently found in deep woods near the junction of Smith Grade and Moore Ranch Road, where she was last seen. I am sad to think she died in fear, and alone. What was she looking for? Was she just on a walk and did not know how to find her way home? Was she looking for something, someone? Why did she walk into the woods and not stay on the road? 

We will never know. 

Reading the Map

 A Map to the Next World

 

By Joy Harjo

for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for

those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged

from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It

must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it

was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the

altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our

children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born

there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to

disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to

them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s

small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a

spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking

from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh

deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world

there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song

she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they

entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the

destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our

tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

A Mark of Resistance (by Adrienne Rich)

 

A Mark of Resistance

Stone by stone I pile
this cairn of my intention
with the noon's weight on my back,
exposed and vulnerable
across the slanting fields
which I love but cannot save
from floods that are to come;
can only fasten down
with this work of my hands,
these painfully assembled
stones, in the shape of nothing
that has ever existed before.
A pile of stones: an assertion
that this piece of country matters
for large and simple reasons.
A mark of resistance, a sign.

Death Fugue (By Paul Celan, translated by Pierre Joris)

 

                    Death Fugue 

Black milk of morning we drink you evenings
we drink you at noon and mornings we drink you at night
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with the snakes he writes
he writes when it darkens to Deutschland your golden hair Margarete
he writes and steps in front of his house and the stars glisten and he whistles his dogs to come
he whistles his jews to appear let a grave be dug in the earth
he commands us play up for the dance

Black milk of dawn we drink you at night
we drink you mornings and noontime we drink you evenings
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with the snakes he writes
he writes when it turns dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margarete
Your ashen hair Shulamit we dig a grave in the air there one lies at ease

He calls jab deeper into the earth you there and you other men sing and play
he grabs the gun in his belt he draws it his eyes are blue
jab deeper your spades you there and you other men continue to play for the dance

Black milk of dawn we drink you at night
we drink you at noon we drink you evenings
we drink you and drink
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamit he plays with the snakes

He calls out play death more sweetly death is a master from Deutschland
he calls scrape those fiddles more darkly then as smoke you’ll rise in the air
then you’ll have a grave in the clouds there you’ll lie at ease

Black milk of dawn we drink you at night
we drink you at noon death is a master from Deutschland
we drink you evenings and mornings we drink and drink
death is a master from Deutschland his eye is blue
he strikes you with lead bullets his aim is true
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he sets his dogs on us he gifts us a grave in the air
he plays with the snakes and dreams death is a master from Deutschland

your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamit

Never Found

 An update regarding Jeanne Burke: she was never found. That's the simple, sad fact. I cannot imagine what her family is going through. Despite that the outcome was likely inevitable after several days due to the cold weather and rain, we still held out hope that she would be rescued. I'm not even sure someone will find her remains in that rugged area. People still post things like, "Look in the blackberry bushes!" or posit that someone picked her up and she's now in a hospital or homeless camp. The latter might have some small grain of truth in it. Still, it seems like one of those stories where someone has amnesia for years and suddenly wakes up knowing their identity. 

It's horrifically sad. I was recently invited to go up to Empire Grade with friends to view a meteor shower, but declined. It's one of the roads that Jeanne was known to have walked.

I can't go up there anymore, and may never.

 

Lost: Jeanne Burke, Santa Cruz County, California

 Something very sad has unfolded over the last week. A caveat: I'm only reporting what I've heard and read in the media. I apologize if I haven't gotten some of the details accurately.

Jeanne Burke, a 73-year-old resident of my hometown (Felton, California) has been lost in the mountains for over a week. Jeanne used to work at the post office and also owned an archery store.

Jeanne lived near one of two quarries in Felton. It is easy to get lost up there even if you know the terrain. Jeanne wandered off from her home around 3:00 in the afternoon. She was first spotted near the quarry, headed towards Empire Grade.

Let me tell you about that section of Empire Grade. The last time I was up at the Empire Grade quarry gate, I was with a couple of friends across the street, hoping to see a comet. We'd already seen the comet at the beach before the full moon rose, but we decided to make a trek up into the mountains to get a better look. We didn't see the comet, but the "mistake" turned out to be a happy one: we found ourselves in a meadow so fabulously moonlit that it seemed drenched in silver. 

Empire Grade itself, however, scared the crap out of me; despite the bright moonlight, the trees seemed strange, almost sinister, and giant quarry and construction trucks kept zooming by. I finally had to go sit in my friend's car, and felt grateful when we finally headed home.

You'd think seeing an elder walking along that remote road might prompt someone to stop and offer help. A couple of years ago, an elder wandered off from an assisted living home near downtown Santa Cruz and walked ten miles up Highway One, a busy road where NOBODY walks. This woman was found deceased on a service road in the woods. Why NO ONE stopped to ask an elder why she was walking along Highway One is beyond me. 

The latter is true about Jeanne as well. She walked a short way to Smith Grade Road, which a lot of people won't even drive, much less walk (including me). It's a steep, winding road flanked by heavy woods and and ravines. I am confounded that nobody stopped to ask a 73-year-old woman why she was walking by herself on that road.

Jeanne was sighted for the last time at 4:30 pm on Moore Ranch Road, which branches off Smith Grade. The alert had already gone out that Jeanne was missing, but the person who saw her didn't know that, just thought she was one of many walkers who frequented the area. I can't imagine how this person must feel now.

Moore Ranch Road looks like a very pleasant, flat road flanked by wide meadows (I've never been there myself, but saw a video of that area made by a mountain biker). Still, by 4:30 this time of year, sunset is less than 30 minutes away. Darkness falls early in the woods, and by 5:30 or so, it begins to get pitch black. Jeanne had no flashlight, no food, no proper clothing except a light jacket. She wore a black sandal on one foot, a pink one on the other. 

There was a huge search-and-rescue operation over the week, with search dogs, helicopters, and search-and-rescue teams from all over Northern California. A search dog lost her scent at the intersection of Moore Ranch Road and Lupine Lane. Where did she go after that? Nobody knows.

Planes with infrared capability searched at night. Planes to communicate with ground crews circled the area during the day, as well as search planes and helicopters. The weather grew cold, then rainy, then clear and cold again. There was no trace of Jeanne at all.

 On the 24th, the formal search was "paused" to analyze GPS data and "determine the next steps." I am sure people will still look for her, but after a week lost in dark, cold woods, with a couple of rainy days, no shelter, no proper clothing, no food or water, the chance of finding her alive is slim. 

My hope is that perhaps Jeanne found an outbuilding to shelter in. It may not have prevented a worst-case scenario, but maybe she would have found some comfort at not being out in the cold and rain. 

My thoughts are jumbled and sad right now, and there is no more I can really say. 

 

A poem by A. J. M. Smith. Written during the Vietnam war. "Apposite then/And now, goddammit, again." Only now, not even crocodile tears from that quarter.

Pity the Nation

For the MAGA nation:

PITY THE NATION”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (After Khalil Gibran) 

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

The Colonel by Carolyn Forche

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

Poem by Denise Levertov: November 15, 1969

Brown gas-fog, white

beneath the street lamps.

Cut off on three sides, all space filled

with our bodies.

      Bodies that stumble

in brown airlessness, whitened

in light, a mildew glare,

      that stumble

hand in hand, blinded, retching.

Wanting it, wanting

to be here, the body believing it’s

dying in its nausea, my head

clear in its despair, a kind of joy,

knowing this is by no means death,

is trivial, an incident, a

fragile instant.    Wanting it, wanting

         with all my hunger this anguish,

         this knowing in the body

the grim odds we’re

up against, wanting it real.

Up that bank where gas

curled in the ivy, dragging each other

up, strangers, brothers

and sisters.    Nothing

will do but

to taste the bitter

taste. No life

other, apart from

I remember this commercial!

 

A Poem by Helen Goldbaum, Written in 1939. This poem calls across time to us.

In the Shadow of Great Times

^.
by Helen Goldbaum
^.
We are like people at a wayside station, waiting
      between trains, or between planes.
We attend the cinema, consult our watches.
We sit down and stretch our legs, stare at the skylight.
We buy a paper and read it without comprehending.
^.
Noticing the whistles blowing, the crowds coming and going,
We listen for the porter to call sonorously the panel
      of destinations.
^.
Decorously the clock ticks: we await the roar of the transport. 

The Crazy Women of Plaza de Mayo

 

The poet's voice carries the fire in these troubled times.

The Crazy Women of Plaza de Mayo

By Salima Rivera

Me llaman La Loca de la Plaza de Mayo.

Every day I go to look for my son,

a prisoner of a treacherous tyranny

or maybe he lays rotting in an unknown grave.

I don’t know.

Every day I go down to the Plaza

to raise my voice in chorus with the others,

“¡Malditos asesinos! Give us our sons.

Tell us what are their crimes—

what have they done?”

They laugh at us, call us crazy.

I’m crazy because I want to know

the fate of my son whose only crime

was to say we are hungry.

I’m crazy because he raged against

the injustice of it, watching us slowly die

having no dreams of our own to nourish us.

I’m crazy because I love this boy—

flesh of my womb—

who did the only thing a man

with nothing left but his dignity could do.

And they laugh at me;

these bloated jackals glutted

with the blood of our offspring.

So drunk with their power,

so blissfully unaware

that this crazy woman,

the mother they ridicule and scorn,

carries deep within her the sprouted seed

of their destruction,

the bloody beginning to the end of their rule.

Y me llaman La Loca

Their Beauty Has More Meaning

I want to push the seasons away, but this Robinson Jeffers poem reminds me that "this too shall pass." 

Their Beauty Has More Meaning

Yesterday morning enormous the moon hung low on the ocean,
Round and yellow-rose in the glow of dawn;
The night herons flapping home wore dawn on their wings. Today
Black is the ocean, black and sulphur the sky,
And white seas leap. I honestly do not know which day is more beautiful.
I know that tomorrow or next year or in twenty years
I shall not see these things—and it does not matter, it does not hurt.
They will be here. And when the whole human race
Has been like me rubbed out, they will still be here: storms, moon and ocean,
Dawn and the birds. And I say this: their beauty has more meaning
Than the whole human race and the race of birds. 

The Purse-Seine

I turn to Robinson Jeffers again to find words for these ungracious times. If a time comes when we cannot speak, poetry will speak for us. 

                The Purse-Seine

                         by Robinson Jeffers

Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net, unable to see the phosphorescence of the
    shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off
    Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color light on the sea's night-purple; he
    points, and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.
    They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great labor haul it in.
                                                                         I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible, then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall to the other of their closing destiny
    the phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body sheeted with flame, like a live
    rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up to watch; sighing in the dark; the
    vast walls of night
Stand erect to the stars.

                               Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light: how could I help but recall the
    seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how beautiful the city appeared, and a little
    terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together into interdependence; we
    have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival,
    insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all dependent. The circle is
    closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet they shine already. The
    inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we and our children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all powers–or revolution, and the
    new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls–or anarchy, the mass-disasters.

                         These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps its reason? Or it lets go,
    lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria, splintered gleams, crackled
    laughter. But they are quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life's
    end is death

Shine

I have great love and admiration for Robinson Jeffers and his poetry. He lived in Carmel before it became "Carmel."  

Jeffers wrote the following poem in 1952:

 

Shine, Perishing Republic

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass
      hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and
      home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or
     suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center;
     corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the
     mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable
     master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught–they say–God, when he walked on earth. 

The Poems

 (In which I describe the process of putting a chapbook manuscript together for a contest).

  

The Poems, Day One

I'm working on a chapbook manuscript for a competition, the prize of which is $1000, 20 copies of the chapbook (which, despite the origin of the name--"cheap book"--is to be more than just a stapled-together printout), and the best prize of all, an "amethyst Depression glass trophy, circa 1930."

Yes! The perfect prize for any poet: a trophy for depression! I could have won several of them in my lifetime.

I haven't written a poem in over ten years. A door shut somehow, and I'm not sure why. I began as a poet here in Santa Cruz. What stops me, even now?

I think of that question a lot. Toxic hesitation is one thing. Self-doubt, pain over the past--when a poet dips into the well, everything comes up, whether you want it to or not. That is just how it is--a palimpsest of toxic hesitation, doubt, fear, memories good and bad: you have to peel away those layers to get to the jewel at the center, if you're lucky.

Going through my poems, I realize it would be good for me to get back to it--I've been feeling the pull for a long time. But oh, these old poems are just...wow. I wrote some things about my mother that are, in the light of my elder years, very unfair. 

My elder sister had many deeply unresolved issues with my mother and because my sister was dynamic and intimidating, and I was very young, and still a dutiful sister, it was easy to get lost in the eddies of her anger and follow her derision of my mother.  I was too young when I wrote those poems to realize how broken my mother was. I believed she should have realized she was broken and straightened the hell up. But I know now, as I approach my 66th birthday, that her motherhood didn't equate to an ability to gain magical skills to heal herself. She was sick and wouldn't allow herself to be helped. And truly, very few people tried to help her at all.

The poems about my father really bother me, as if I'm trying to convince myself that I forgave him easily and there was no more work to be done. I could feel the suppression of anger in them. I thought the director of my MFA program was being stupid when he told me I was holding back in my writing: now I know what he meant.

So I've chosen for the chapbook what I think are more meaningful: poems that consider my mother as a flawed person, but not a "bad" one. No poems at all about my father--I have to think more deeply about those. Poems about pregnancy, childbirth, an elegy for the children I lost.

And of course, a couple of love poems (which both involve naps). At 66, pretty much everything leads to a nap.

Then there's the miscellaneous pile: an elegy for a friend, a description of a quilt made by an anonymous hired man from scraps of his old shirts, and three poems about "nature."  Really, nature's where it's at. You can write about nature and your entire life can peer out from the trees behind the poem, unseen but there. 

Perhaps I'll try my hand again. I've been duly depressed about the world right now. There's so much painful change, within and without, events I can't control, and a real sense that I'm falling, with everyone I love, off the edge of the world.

But the writer writes through everything,

Here's a link to one of my best poems. I'm still proud of it after all these years. It was published in Poetry magazine, September 1998, so long ago:

                 

            Morning Glory

It is as if all sorrows vanish into the earth
and re-bloom into flowers like this,
an origami shape filled with sky.
For weeks, the small buds stayed shut,
spiraling ovals on a waxy vine
that laced the stems of the last sunflowers.
I thought the first frost would darken it,
tighten it to coils of thin black wire,
but then, this morning, the blossom’s open dress,
blue silk that will wrinkle in hours,
yet for now, like a watercolor painted in the air,
one luminous white star in its shining throat. 

 

The Poems, Day Two 

Putting together this chapbook manuscript makes me shake my darn head from time to time.

I just edited a poem I wrote long ago, titled "Garnets." It's a fair poem, about losing my virginity, of all things, in my twenties (that's how old the poem is, lol), and I described it as some sort of holy ritual. 

Holy ritual?! Talk about rose-colored glasses!

I edited the poem to put the kibosh on the "holiness" and tease out the frank cheapness of the experience, which brings it closer to the truth, and will include it in the manuscript. 

The  other "love poem" (such as they are) I chose is called Night Cove, and I think it is one of my best. I was in my forties when I wrote it, in a relatively happy time in my life (when I also had dark hair, still. It's almost completely white now, and I don't dye it anymore. There's a little weirdness in the poem (note the line about my hair--I don't know why it did that, because it did--maybe we were opening and closing our mouths like codfish). 

This was published in Catamaran:

                      

             Night Cove

Long after love has veiled us both with salt,
we lie beneath your raveled blanket,
soft breathers, our sleep a tide going out.
Your skin is freckled like sand and my dark hair slides,
slippery as kelp, into both our mouths.
Here the sea is so close fog muffles the sky in white wool
and the mile buoy sounds its dull gray note
all night until I float precariously on the surface of dreams
like the small boat we saw off Monterey
anchored after dark, its blazing lamp
shining into slick waves the color of ink.
You told me how squid rose to the net, silver souls
drawn to the beams of that artificial moon,
while, thin as a kayak, the real moon rode
through flowing sable clouds, its whiteness vanishing and reappearing
like the glimpse of a woman’s shoulder in the folds of a ragged shawl. 

 

 

 

 

Thread

So many changes in my life now: one of those times when everything feels like waves cresting and breaking. Beloved places are shuttering and with it, acquaintances I may never see again. Letting go seems to be the order of the day.

I prefer the company of my own strangeness nowadays. I am an elder who slips deeper and deeper into the forest, making a home there. If people want to see me, they must seek me out; everyone and no one knows how to find me.

Even dance is growing ever more silent for me--not finished: sometimes I think I might very well dance my way out of this life. When I dance by myself these days, the moves are not the bold, powerful motions I usually like. These days, I move, by deliberate design, around a central axis, everything proceeding from the center, as if I am attached to the cosmos with a thread thin as spider-silk. My gestures are slow, quiet. In these troubled times within and without, it is important to find the center.

I've been fortunate enough to find music that really works well with this type of dance. Ozgur Baba is a Turkish singer and musician. In the following video, he's playing the cura baglama, a traditional Turkish stringed instrument. I highly recommend his YouTube channel. Here is a sampling (I danced to this last night, alone in my living room):

 

 

Hair

I think someone should stage a stealth production of "Hair" at the Kennedy Center. Tell the MAGAs it's about Trump's "golden locks," then raise the curtain on opening night for a big surprise. 

Critical Theory Since Plato

I am trying to find tasks to occupy my time as the country grows ever-more alarming. Who the hell asked Elon Musk to do ANYTHING government-related? They sneaked him in the way people used to put blankets over their friends in the backseat of a car, to get them in free to a drive-in movie.

 So, I am downsizing books, packing some up for storage, weeding out what I want to keep on my shelves, for now. I found some very precious books from when I was in college: my textbook on John Milton, poems and essay collections by William Carlos Williams, a slender copy of The Wasteland, with a black-and grey cover. I also found my first-edition copy of Ariel by Sylvia Plath, and a book of Dylan Thomas's collected poems (probably bought at the same place). The latter two I bought and read on my own. 

 Nostalgically, I went onto Alibris a few minutes ago, wondering if there might possibly be a copy of a dreadful textbook I had for a class in my senior undergrad year: Critical Theory Since Plato. Yes, it is a real book, or at least I had remembered it as such. The Alibris search brought it up immediately.

I have thought for some time about creating a legend about CTSP in the book I'm currently writing, that students swear a book of such bone-crushing dullness cannot possibly exist. The urban legend leads to a Watergate-style break-in by soused English majors when they hear CTSP lurks somewhere in the always-locked faculty library. Maybe not soused--God knows how many times my friends and I went on the silliest,  almost Pythonesque adventures when I was an undergrad, without a drop of Demon Rum in sight. Plus, there's enough drunks in my book already that it's practically its own AA meeting.

A professor named Hazard Adams wrote Critical Theory Since Plato. Now there's a name: it sounds like someone who writes about living among grizzlies, or mushing a dog team through Alaska. Apparently Hazard Adams was, in real life, a well-liked professor at the University of Washington (he passed away in 1993). But what a name! There had to be a grizzly in there, somehow, somewhere.

 But I digress, as always (sometimes I fear I digress so much that I will make myself ageless). The real-world Critical Theory Since Plato has a plain, bull's-blood-red cover, with the title and author's name stamped in brassy gold. I remember from my first copy that this book looked old even when it was brand-new. The dull cover wraps an equally dull text: so tedious that I literally do not remember anything about it.

So why pay nine bucks on Alibris for a book I clearly hated, from a year that's in the top category of "the most traumatic years of my life?" I simply want to see if I might understand anything in the book after forty-odd years, with nearly fifteen years of that time spent in academia. I suppose my entertainments these days are as dull as that textbook.

For nine bucks, why not?  I can even promise you an update, Faithful Readers. 

Onward.

A Word

To the small audience who comes to this page: this is definitely a terrifying time, to say the least. The White House will soon be infested once again by Donald Trump, a felon and failed game show host, and JD Vance, a quisling turncoat. The ketamine-riddled man-child, Elon Musk, will have a little office near to Trump, so he can easily whisper in Trump's ear. Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Cook have all kissed the ring. The "Democracy Dies in Darkness" slogan of the Washington post has been undercut by “Riveting Storytelling for All of America," as if it's slowing morphing into the National Enquirer.

The center seems not to hold. So many people are afraid of what will happen, starting tomorrow, on Infestation Day. I really think these clowns will ultimately engage in a cage match and beat each other to a pulp, metaphorically. I pray it is not before immense suffering is visited upon innocent citizens.

Niceness needs to go out the window on the part of Democrats in office: just as the Republicans never gave an inch on Capitol Hill, so do Democrats need to be pit bulls now. We citizens can do what we can, but we are not in the very locus of the fight.

The ACLU website is a wealth of information about resistance, and I strongly recommend visiting the site often:

https://www.aclu.org/

In Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a father and son walk through a post-apocalyptic world. There is no government, no food, no safe homes: people have devolved into the "bad guys" (lawless, murderous cannibals) and "good guys" (a smaller group of people who maintain their humanity and sense of decency). The father and son discuss what it means to hold onto these things:

We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?

No. Of course not.

No matter what.

No. No matter what.

Because we’re the good guys.

Yes.

And we’re carrying the fire.

And we’re carrying the fire.

Yes.

Okay.

With insanity all around, with ignorance and fear trying to drag us down, holding on to one's humanity (and all that goes with it--the ability to resist, to stay strong, to believe in one's agency) is the final, last hope of a better world to come. 

The flame of goodness and decency, of everything that is true and right, is now in the hands of the good guys.

Be strong and carry the fire.

Forget Christmas Carols

 

Oops, published out of date blog posts

 Working on my mobile phone to update this blog, I accidentally posted old entries that I thought I had deleted or unpublished today, which then got sent to my mailing list.

I suppose my Faithful Readers will get to see what a traumatized, grieving person I was a few years ago. I am grateful that at least some of that trauma has been resolved.

At any rate, apologies!

What Else Can I Write?

 What else can I write for these times? 2016 has recycled and the dumpster has begun to unload again. 

Faithful Readers, I am 65 years old, having lived more or less on borrowed time since my thirties. I have had 3 near-death experiences. I lived through three years of chemotherapy for lupus that took everything to get through. I managed to avoid Covid, but the stress of those years aged me, as it did everyone I know. I now have two heart conditions and work every day to stay well so that I can stay on this earth. 

But I have never, ever lived through years like this.

I was born into the Eisenhower administration. I clearly remember JFK's assassination, though I was only four. My uncle served in the Vietnam war and came back with profound PTSD. I remember the first moon landing, the Watergate hearings, Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon. I remember Jimmy Carter losing to Ronald Reagan, and the profound sense I had then that nothing was going to be the same. I lived through the Bush presidencies, the Clinton presidency, rejoiced when Barack Obama was elected, practically threw up when the buffoon, Trump, was elected, and felt deep gratitude for Biden's presidency.

Now Trump the Buffoon inches towards being sworn into office. Not a madman, really: a malignant buffoon, but someone clearly tailor-made, in his unfortunate cognitive decline, for manipulation by other malignant forces.

No one knows what will happen, or even what is happening now. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has promised to protect this state. I am grateful I do not live somewhere else. 

I think the continued challenge for these times is to not throw myself into fear and despair, even though that seems a luxury right now. I plan to never listen to the Orange Reptilian honk away--even as I know I must keep aware of the news and of budding menace. I pray my family is safe, and my loved ones (I really want to say I don't care about the MAGA ones, but I do, even as I'd rather not hear from them again).

Right now, my hope is that I live to see this clown taken down once and for all, via the Midterm Elections first. We erased the idiots once from the White House, and despite Trump's bluster, I still think he will never become a dictator. 

I am grateful I chose to try and find conscious gratitude for the Biden administration. I did not fear dying in a nuclear war then. I did not feel a constantly knotted-up stomach. I had to search out what the man was doing for the country, because it was All Trump, All The Time, in the media. That he had to end his campaign was a tragedy. There were forces around him, too. Harris had racism, misogyny, apathy, and the MAGA need for "bread and circuses" against her. We lost, and the world lost, too--though some don't know it yet.

Tonight the moon is full; the annual flowers in my planters are dying. I planted three tomato plants; we ate tomatoes all summer until we got sick of them. I harvested seven pumpkins (with a last one still on the vine). I have three pounds of seeds from sunflower heads, five pounds of popcorn, and maybe a half-pound of scarlet runner beans. Broccoli is going into planters this week. Harvesting it all was a moment of quiet and centering for me. Learning to dry seeds and corn felt primal to me. Perhaps the skills will prove useful.

What will things be like as the old year ends and the new year begins? One last Christmas for the Bidens in the White House. The next Christmas, Melania might buy some tinsel at CVS and drape it on a coatrack in the Oval Office. 

I have had many, many times in my life where I felt no hope whatsoever: and yet hope was there. Even as the world slides into shadow, literally and figuratively, it is important to find something bright to grasp. It seems an essential search right now for any ray of light.

To MAGAs

 To MAGAs:

I see you. I see your asinine posts thanking your version of God that the convicted rapist/felon/con/grifter/reptile Donald J. Trump was elected. I see you thanking your plaster, hollow-eyed version of Baby Jesus. I see you in your delusion that he's going to Make America Great Again. I see you crowing about owning the libs.

Here's a message for you: Trump hates you. You think you've "owned the libs?" Trump owns YOU.

If you voted for Donald Trump, you share in every evil thing he stands for. You stand in the shadow of a convicted rapist, a felon, a con who laughs about what a bunch of idiots you are. You think Trump the God will protect you when your Medicare is slashed, when your Social Security dwindles to nothing, when the price of food skyrockets because there's no one to harvest it. You're not exempt. You'll suffer like the rest of us. And Trump and his toadies won't care, because they care nothing for you.

Btw: there are some branches of theology that theorize Jesus Christ was disabled. There are some texts that describe him as crippled, bald, short (under five feet tall), but with a compelling gaze. You would spit on a person like this: an unattractive man with disabilites, with brown skin, someone who was a refugee from violence. You would put him in a detention camp, guaranteed. 

As for the rest of us: I don't know the answers, yet. Maybe there are no answers. But we're good at gathering strength when the chips are down. 

For as long as I have the right to free speech, I will use it. I hope my fellow writers do, too. Yes, we're scared: so is every writer who lives under oppression. But we rise, as we have, and as we must.

Update, And All the Changes

First: I will be updating this blog more frequently, I hope, and I have also joined with the modern era and opened a substack. I will be adding a link to this on my blog's page as well. I hope to update it as well as this.

My substack may very well be more "public" than this blog, which has felt very internal and diary-like. Here is the substack link. You can subscribe if you wish, or not:

Joan McMillan's substack

Faithful Readers, I know it has been some time since I have posted. I have been in a long recuperation from the experience with my heart last August. Further tests have shown that I have an enlarged heart along with coronary artery spasms. I never thought I would be on multiple heart medications, but here I am. I am on both time-released nitroglycerin and "regular" nitroglycerin. Curiously, I hope that if I am to ever have a fatal heart attack, that I just drop like a stone and never come back. 

Oddly, the people who most stridently in denial about me having lupus, and how much it debilitated me, have offered me kindness and wishes for good health after learning about my cardiac event. And still, some think it is a kind of affront, as if I am to live forever. Get used to it, folks: that day will come for me, too, and I am not afraid.

I have PTSD from the experience, I tire easily, and hot weather affects me much more in my mid-sixties than ever. There are days I am sometimes in such pain, it feels like someone is shooting electric shocks through my body. These are days that happen every few weeks, thankfully, but they are horrific. There are medications but they dull my mind--a tradeoff. 

Can I get my health back? I'm trying. I will not leave the earth until I know for sure that my grandchildren will be okay. That is all I want now. And to finish a couple of quilts, and of course still write. Everything else is gravy, as Raymond Carter wrote. 

I'm turning from this short update to watch the third day of the Democratic National Convention. Someone said that these last few weeks have been the most stressful ten years of their lives! We are living history--hopefully one of the best histories. We have a chance to put the Orange Lizard and his ear-bandage-diaper-wearing-specimen-cup-holding-insurrection-making followers back in their holes. 

Life can be better. We can rise to the occasion. Vote as if your life depends on it, as if the life of the world depends on it, because it does.

Closing Chapter

Faithful readers, I believe I am seeing my dying process on the horizon--hopefully a far one, but today it seems very near. 

I have been diagnosed with three very serious concurrent heart conditions, two of which could be fatal with little or no warning. One reason I am alive right now is because I have taken very good care of myself over the last couple of decades. I believe, however, that my daughter's death literally broke my heart. Right now I am lucky to be alive, for many reasons, but everyone's luck runs out eventually.

My heart conditions are congenital and were not detected in full until I ended up in the hospital in August 2023 with an evolving heart attack. A coronary angiogram at the time showed that I have zero plaque in my coronary arteries, something greatly in my favor. I have a good cardiologist and his staff is wonderful. However, this new twilight zone carries with it the sense that I have become a near-transparent ghost on the shore of the Styx. Everything feels grey in the Cardiology medical office. It does not seem like a place of healing. My heart medications, though manageable, are a reminder that something has gone terribly wrong.

It's true that no one can ever predict one's natural lifespan. My great-grandmother Maria lived most of her life with one of my conditions and passed away at 98--perhaps later, as it was rumored she shaved a couple of years off her age! A certain vanity runs in the family. It's possible I can stabilize, and I hold to that belief. The worsening of my heart problems has greatly raised the bar for a stroke or heart attack. I muse that I would rather have a heart attack and keep my mental functioning, even with the debility (which could be overcome) and PTSD afterwards. It would be merciful after all I have gone through if I just dropped like a stone and popped straightaway into the afterlife. I'm starting to have more friends and family over there than here: this is to be expected as one ages. It would be a relief to just succumb to this process. But I have vowed to stay here for as long as I can, to make sure all of my grandchildren are safe.

I am not afraid of death and am slowly beginning to be at peace with my fate. Fearful that my loved ones will forget to grant my dying wish--to receive the Last Rites, the final sacrament of my childhood faith--I will be asking the local priest for it soon. It has evolved from a before-death ritual to a healing, life affirming ritual, so I feel it's appropriate.

A stroke terrifies me: to lose my language, my ability to walk, to move freely: tempting to ask one of my doctor or nurse friends well in advance if they would be willing to load up a syringe of morphine if it happens and send me packing. But how can I ask another human being to do that for me? It is unconscionable. I will not willingly choose my own death and leave that as both my legacy and in the DNA of future generations. I will let the tide go out on its own.

I have not done everything as a writer (so far, at least) that I wanted to do in this life, and I am at peace with that. I did more than some, less than others, and also have come to see that the narcissism, the competition, the disappointment over a perceived lack of recognition, the warring between writers, the haves vs. the perceived have-nots: these are mirages. I think it's a worthy path to pursue the mirage and reap whatever you can from it. But it's still a mirage.

What matters is the act of creation: so what if you reach three people or three million with your writing? So what if your magnum opus unexpectedly appears on the cheap-paperback stand in a 7/11 (yes, they had those back then) as one of my professors in college did? Heck, that's more than many writers get: who cares if someone picks up a cherry Slurpee along with your magnum opus? My first dance performance with my former troupe was between the salad bar and the extra-seating area in a Round Table pizza place in San Jose (the owners, curiously, hosted bellydance shows monthly). It was a blast, and a very treasured memory.

I hope the afterlife, when I get there, is what I have heard described in near-death experiences. I believe I have seen it before, in dreams and my own NDEs. I hope to know everything about the universe, the historical events of this world which were never recorded, to meet up with my relatives and all the people who loved me and whom I loved in return. If there is indeed nothing and the jig is up when my body ceases to function--well, I won't know that. I'll just go out like a candle. That is the serenity of accepting mortality, though it's something I have to work for over and over these days.

The Bhagavad-Gita says that "The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed." I believe this.

Until that time comes, I do hope to be back here in this small corner of the Internet, hopefully to say I am doing better. I know I will keep writing until I physically and mentally cannot. As I said at the beginning of this entry, I see my death on the horizon; perhaps it will wait, perhaps not. But the culmination of the positive things I have done in this life concentrate to one point now: I walked on this earth for a few decades, and soon I will be gone. And this is what is. My only sorrow is that for some, my death will bring about grief and pain. I wish there was some way not to have that happen.

I hope those who come here, those who knew me when, and those who know me now. remember me as a person who was wholly and completely human. I made terrible mistakes and have tried, to the best of my ability, to remedy and make amends for them. I was at war with myself most of my life, and I pulled people into that war. That is my greatest regret. I hope that I made up my transgressions. And I hope at least some people think of the good things I have done during this gift of an incarnation. I know the good cannot outweigh the bad. But perhaps there is some good to remember me by.

Let's hope I am back to write more, but if not: Om shanti. Blessed Be. And so it is. Amen.

Every Story Must End

Faithful Readers, I have again been away--partially for the happy reason that I am on the second draft of my romantic comedy (more of a "dramady"). I am proud of this book, even if it never sees the light of day. by being published.

The other reason is that on August 28th, I went to the emergency room at the local hospital, thinking I was having an asthma attack. I have had asthma for many years, not very well controlled despite a daily steroid inhaler. During the CZU fire a couple of years back, my lungs took a hit from smoke inhalation, from which they have never really recovered. Smoke and artificial fragrances set asthma off now almost immediately. On August 28th, while at an appointment, I was exposed to the most vile, oily, toxic air freshener (the plug-in-the-wall kind) in a revolting vanilla fragrance. It could be smelled strongly even down the street. I apologized and left the appointment immediately, very stressed, though I did not indicate that to her.

The ensuing asthma attack (or so I thought) was quite intense--shortness of breath, pain in my lungs (or so I thought), and gasping for breath. Because my symptoms were so acute, I was brought into our local hospital's urgent care section, which is staffed by physician's assistants. The physician's assistant came in and listened to my lungs, said they were clear-sounding (not unusual for me), and ordered a breathing treatment based on my symptoms. A breathing treatment consists of a bronchodilator, delivered in a fine mist and inhaled over a period of time in the ER.

The physician's assistant listened to my lungs again before the respiratory therapist came in with the set-up for the breathing treatment. She paused and said, "I'm going to listen to your heart for a minute." She listened and listened, and when the nurse came in with the breathing treatment, she said, "Don't give her that."

Everything happened quite quickly (and calmly) then. She sent me for a blood draw, then an EKG. Usually when I have had an EKG, they declare it normal, and that's that. The guy who did the EKG left quickly with it, and soon after, I found myself in a wheelchair, being taken into the "Emergency" side of the ER.

And then, Faithful Readers, so many medical folks started working on me that it was nearly like the iconic A Night at the Opera scene where people start crowding into Groucho's stateroom. One person set up an IV port in the crook of my right arm (unfortunately they messed it up at first and blood shot across the room). Someone put a blood pressure cuff on my left arm, I was put on oxygen, and hooked up to a heart monitor with more electrodes than I have ever seen--they felt like they were everywhere. I began to sweat like I'd been running a marathon. My thoughts ran to "This is one hell of an asthma attack." The medical personnel were quite calm, talking to each other, drawing blood yet again, and trussing me up like a Thanksgiving turkey with tubes and wires.

I had literally no idea what was going on until a nurse gave me aspirin and administered the "clotbuster" medication. I did not feel fear, exactly, just reflected that I really, really did not want to be having a stroke, that I did not want to die like my sister did, of a massive stroke that instantly killed her. I did not want my loved ones to be traumatized by another, sudden death.

Then one fellow, who had been scrutinizing my heart monitor, turned to me and said, "So you came in thinking you were having an asthma attack?" I nodded and he said, "Your cardiac enzymes are elevated."

I had no idea what he meant. I figured enzymes were some benign thing, like the type they put in laundry detergent. I did not have time to inquire about that because the fellow said, "We need to do a CAT scan to see if you have a blood clot in your heart."

Somehow, I was not panicking. The calm atmosphere of the room helped. It was explained that cardiac enzymes are usually undetectable in bloodwork. It is only when the heart muscle is becoming injured or dying that these enzymes are released, in particular one called troponin. And what was causing my heart to release cardiac enzymes? 

I was in the middle of an evolving heart attack. The fellow further told me that he was glad I did not have a breathing treatment because (drum roll), there was a real possibility I would have gone into cardiac arrest.

Yes, Faithful Readers, I would have, in sum, more than likely dropped dead, my stressed heart unable to withstand the medication in the breathing treatment.

They admitted me and I was taken to the CAT scan room (loads of fun getting unhooked from everything, having the test, and then getting hooked back up). There was no blood clot in my heart, for which I was extraordinarily grateful.

Meantime, the pain on the left side of my chest was worsening. I felt like someone had leveled a blunt, ice-cold pole and popped it into my left-side chest, hard. They asked me to describe the pain--I said it felt like there was a large circle of pain on the left side of my chest, surrounded by coldness (that was the weirdest sensation of all). There was pressure on the left side, also. A doctor who works with my primary care physician came in and began to watch my heart monitor. She told me to tell her when my chest pain increased. When it happened, she gave me a nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue, and the pain and pressure went away.

This process went on and on: I would feel a rise in the pressure and pain, she would watch the monitor, then give me a nitroglycerin pill. Sometimes the pain would not stop with one nitroglycerin; I ended up needing three tablets a couple of times. Once, when she stepped out of the room, I felt the pain and pressure start, but wondered if it was enough to call her back in the room. She walked in, looked at the heart monitor, then as if reading my mind, said "Please don't wait to see if it's bad enough."

I wonder if they had, at some point, given something to relax me because the next thing I remember was being taken to the Cardiac Care Unit (comparable to an ICU, but with specialized equipment for cardiac patients). The nurse was a courteous young man who helped me get comfortable, as much as I could, and I fell asleep. I was beyond exhausted. I was sweating, still mostly in my street clothes except for a hospital gown, and famished (they gave me a turkey sandwich and an apple juice).

A cardiologist came in the next morning and discussed my condition. He said he would do a cardiac catheterization (where a catheter is threaded through a major artery into the heart, and dye is injected into the heart so the coronary arteries can be visualized). I suddenly remembered that I'd had this procedure years ago, when my chronic illness (lupus) was first diagnosed, and I was put on heart medication for a long period of time. Somehow that condition stabilized, but I do not remember what happened. I don't even remember what the condition was (it was thirty+ years ago, for one thing).

The cardiologist explained that the procedure was different from many years ago. Instead of putting the catheter into the femoral artery (a really creepy procedure), they thread a thin catheter into the radial artery of the wrist and into the heart. The cardiologist further explained the risks of the procedure, that he could do things like a coronary bypass through the catheter, etc. He was a kind and courteous man.

I was wheeled into the catheterization lab--and talk about state of the art! Stainless steel everywhere, and very disorienting, with reflections like a funhouse mirror. I was not allowed to watch the procedure; they put up a kind of shield.

Turns out my coronary arteries were free of plaque that would indicate clogged arteries. It was discovered that I have a slightly enlarged heart, that a small section of one coronary artery is inside the heart muscle, not on top of it. The other condition is spasms of my coronary arteries, which causes the chest pain. It can be a dangerous condition: if the spasm goes on too long, or compresses the buried section of artery too much or too long, I can have a heart attack.

I'm now, once again, wandering in the strange, almost afterlife-like, world of the chronically ill. I now have a cardiologist, who has put me on time-release nitroglycerin, so that I do not have to use the "rescue" nitroglycerin tablets. This dilates the coronary arteries and reduces the amount of work my heart has to do. I am also on statins (cholesterol medication). My cholesterol was a bit high, and my cardiologist wants it below 100, all to support my heart and keep it working so hard.

Lupus (which I have had now for 30 years) could very well be the culprit, but I will not know until a few more tests are run.

In sum, I am profoundly ill, even though I do feel much better after a few months of recovery, mild exercise, eating a heart-healthy diet (as much as I can), and taking all my medications properly. I am not afraid to die. I AM afraid of leaving people I love behind, and hurting them by my going. I have no desire to plunge people into those year+ grieving periods that seem to happen more and more these days. 

Every day now is precious, even though I must confess that I am not always using my days well, and would like to change that. I could live for many, many years and hope I do. But I am mortal and at some point, my story and my journey must end. Every day of my life since 1993 has been bought with more tremendous effort than I have ever let on. It has been a worthy price to remain on this planet.

I often say that the death of my precious daughter broke my heart, and turns out it did. I believe in an afterlife, and I hope that I will be reunited with my loved ones.

But not now, and hopefully not for many years.

What Sinead Did

Yesterday I revisited a video of a Saturday Night Live performance which I found bizarre and scandalous when it first came out: Sinead O'Connor's acapella performance of Bob Marley's "War," where she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II at the end, saying, "Fight the real enemy."

I had not seen this video in many years. It shows Sinead looking like an ambassador from the future, with her shaved head (not so unusual now), her beautiful white dress which made her look like an acolyte, her astounding voice...and her courage to shed her unique light on the abuse which so many, many of us who grew up in the Catholic Church experienced. She was mocked, vilified, treated with the worst disrespect because she dared to speak what so many could not, because no one wanted to hear.

I wonder how many people know that a teenage Sinead O'Connor was sent to one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, a Church-run, prison-like environment for (perceived) "throwaway" and "wayward" girls and women. You can read about her experience here:

https://www.her.ie/celeb/sinead-oconnor-reveals-how-her-time-in-a-magdalene-laundry-as-a-teenager-affected-her-26994

She knew. She experienced it all firsthand. She knew people who had suffered, and whose suffering was ignored by the very institution which should have been a refuge. The picture of the Pope she tore up had been displayed in her childhood home, and represented, for her, lies and abuse inside and outside her home.

When I watched the infamous video last night, I burst into tears at the end. It is cruel and unfortunate that this talented, outspoken woman has been mocked so much in her career. I cannot imagine the strength it has taken to get through all the difficulties in her life, including the recent death of one of her children, and still keep singing. 

 

 

These Luminescent Days

 I decided to start working more on this blog, which has been something of a lifeline for me since 2005, when I started it.

Right now, despite being vaxxed and with all my boosters as well, I am still isolating a great deal. I expect my life may be like this for a very long time, maybe years. My lungs, already compromised with asthma, were damaged in the Santa Cruz fires a couple of years ago. I have ended up in the ER twice this year with asthma and have had two fungal infections in my lungs over the last couple of months, a side effect of the steroid inhaler I use every day now. Any respiratory infection is dangerous for me, but Covid is a great risk, still. I sit at home, write, work in the garden, do yoga, take Zoom classes when I can, and participate in some outside things (I'm currently helping to take care of two very cute chickens at my granddaughter's former elementary school). I wonder if I will ever be able to go to a museum, a concert, a movie. I wear N95 masks also despite the expense. It's worth it to me not to get any respiratory infection at all. I am healthier all around for it.

I have neglected to tell my readers that my 33 year old daughter (whom I call "Kat" in this blog) died suddenly in March 2021. I think of her as a casualty of the pandemic, someone left vulnerable because the people who loved her could not physically be with her. I talked to her on the phone, on chat, etc., but it was not the same as seeing her in person. She had a late-term miscarriage in February 2021; less than a month later, she was gone, the circumstances of her death unresolved.

I do not remember much about the six months after her death. A friend of the family bought crypts in a beautiful part of a local cemetery, side by side because after my death, my cremains will rest beside her (yes, it's weird to look at my resting-place, but very Buddhist). But she remains uninterred due to family conflicts. I have made a shrine for her ashes in my writing room, which I no longer use for that purpose. I've made her shrine as beautiful as possible, and remember the many good things about the last years she was alive, when she so often had radiant health and sobriety, and truly was a mother to her children. She and I always talked deeply about so many things, and I feel I lost not just my daughter, but my best friend. 

During my journey through this incomprehensible grief, I have read a book I've turned to in many  challenging situations, Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor. I will end this entry with a quote from the book:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Strange Days

 Dear Readers, it was a long summer for my family. My granddaughters, all three, are back in their various schools. Thistle is in eighth grade, something I find hard to believe. I am cleaning and putting old toys into storage, all the while reflecting in the "just yesterday" manner. 

Today I watched kids emerge from the school Thistle attends--enthusiastic, cute kids doing the ordinary things, riding bikes home, talking to friends, parents chatting. There is the hope that we have come through a phase of the pandemic where life can feel a little bit more engaged, especially in terms of being connected with school. Last year, picking up or dropping off Thistle felt like just sending her into a nice edifice called a "school," for I could not enter due to Covid protocols. The school still has safety protocols and many children and parents are masked, but the school is holding more events now and I feel relatively safe about going to some of them. Thistle has had all her vaccinations and boosters, as have I. To top it all off, the weather in Santa Cruz from Spring onwards has felt much more normal. 

Still, I can't help but feel that this touch of normalcy is simply a reprieve.