232. THE MEANEST FLOWER, AND POWERFUL BODIES REDUCED TO TENDER BATTLEGROUNDS

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
(Wm. Wordsworth, from Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)

From the Archives. (June 2006) My former long-term partner has had to resort to anti-depressants to get through her chemo and her eyes look so damn haunted that I can hardly bear to look at her right now.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, she’s a 43-year-old triathlete with breast cancer who can hardly walk up the stairs now on bad days.

OF COURSE she’s depressed. And overwhelmed. And looking at the strong possibility of not living till old age. And exhausted. And in pain. And weak. And haunted.

And her medical degree, although helpful, comes with loads of statistics about every thing that can go wrong between now and the end of her life.

Who wouldn’t be depressed given this scenario?

I’m glad we’re having dinner tonight, but hate seeing her so sick, have such a very hard time swallowing this reality.

•

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
(William Wordsworth, from Ode: Intimations of Immortality, from Recollections of Early Childhood)

Now it is Sunday evening and I just ran inside after getting drenched in a downpour.

We’re in that stage of summer when there’s a thunderstorm with lightning practically every night and it is humid but beautiful so long as you keep the AC blasting.

Last night’s full moon was incredible. Danishgrrrl and I snuggled into the hammock and watched it darting in and out of the clouds, so luminous and beautiful and huge, then fell asleep with it peeking into our windows just ahead of the storms.

We slept in this morning, then went for a long hike by the river, where we hung out on the rocks and in the water and talked a lot before hanging out in the hammock again.

(Did I mention that the back yard is looking so cool now that a winding creek runs through it, inviting people to step out of the sunshine and into its shaded spaces?)

•

Had dinner with Tree Friday night to celebrate the end of her chemo. She looks and feels good now and even sauntered through the Race for the Cure on Saturday.

She’s not her normal marathon-running self yet but is doing so much better now that chemo has ended and even her hair is beginning to grow back in a little.

Radiation is easier but now she’s covered with tattoos and ink marks and plastic bulls’ eyes that tell the technicians where to zap her.

I guess you could say that her body is a battleground in an entirely different way than we’ve thought about that battleground before.

She said that Pottergrrl is terrified of this cancer and has returned to the Seventh Day Adventist vegan meals of her formative years.

I guess controlling the food you eat as a response to seemingly healthy people around you suddenly become gravely ill could provide some semblance of control, convince you that (given enough spinach) you might actually remain immune to death and illness.

And yeah,spinach could keep you healthy for a long time but, let’s face it, we’re all going to die.

I got no qualms with that, but would someone please get the sex toys out of the house before my family shows up to claim my stuff?


READING: Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions

LISTENING TO: the glorious, sexy rain. Also weaklazyliar’s “Forgive Me”: I thought that truth was the line that anchored the kite. I thought that love was a kite to fly. I thought that I was holding on, but I was holding on to nothing, holding onto nothing. Forgive me.

BEST-OF SPAM: She needs better sexx, navy bean!!!

191. CREDIBILITY 101 AND THE PATRON SAINT OF WRITERS

From the Archives

(February 2006) Superbowl Sunday—the most dangerous day of the year to be female in the United States—came and went.

I guess the combination of alcohol and testosterone and heightened emotions and high-fivin’ with the dudes when your team scores big and hours of aggression must make some men feel the need to go home and assault the women who dare to love them.

A sad state of affairs indeed.

I did not watch the Superbowl (although I would have cheered for Seattle if I had).

Instead, I attended a wimmin’s gathering in which we formed a sacred circle and celebrated St. Brigit and our collective emergence from the dark winter into a season of new growth.

Our smudgesticks and poetry and candles lit in the four directions and laughter overflowed.

I read a Mary Oliver poem when the decidedly decorative talking stick made its way into my hands and believe it was well-received.

In between all of our ceremonial hoo-ha, we ate really good food and drank really good wine and ate delicious lavender- and chili-infused dark chocolate.

Mmm!

Of course, we also flipped on the game at halftime so we could watch Mick sing about his inability to get satisfaction, then wound up having an impromptu and quite spastic dance in the living room.

(I was hoping that Mick would “accidentally” flip open his shirt and expose his breast, but he showed more restraint.)

So yeah. Good energy abounded and the whole event reminded me of just how much I treasure women who have done their work and settled into who they are and are comfortable with themselves and aware of their power and who are not intimidated by mine or yours.

St. Brigit is the patron saint of writers, so I guess it was as appropriate day for Betty Friedan to die.

•

I did not get to see Tree this weekend, even though she was briefly in the mountains. She had her lumpectomy today and they removed two suspicious lymph nodes ...

... and even typing that is making my blood run cold and my throat clamp down.

The randomness of this is just so unfair. I mean, I was living the rock-’n’-roll life style way back in 1988 when Tree and I got together and am still staying up too late and eating too much bad-for-me food and indulging in good bottles of vino as she counts every morsel and competes in triathlons ...

... and I can’t write more than that on this topic right now because this news is just too overwhelming.

•

We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible.

That’s what a preacher at Al Omari mosque said in response to a cartoon depicting Muhammad.

This would-be beheader and other extremists consider it blasphemy to print the image of their god and they really consider it blasphemous to depict their god in a bomb-shaped turban.

(Yet they’re in favor of beheading people who see the world differently and expresse those beliefs openly.)

Maybe the cartoonist should consider this preacher’s protests and the actions of that homophobe in Boston who attacked three gay bar patrons with a hatchet and revise the cartoons, convert the turban into a robe, and depict an axe-toting Jesus as well.

(You know, like that old Molly Hatchet album.)

Nice to know that religious fanatics have not completely silenced dissent here though.

The Washington Post recently ran a cartoon that featured "Dr." Rumsfeld writing “battle hardened” onto the medical chart of a quadruple-amputee soldier’s chart. This prompted protest letters from all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

(The administration is still throwing out barbs about the so-called liberal media too but hey, no comparison.)

And here’s more hope.

Bob Schieffer of CBS’s Face the Nation recently grilled former White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales about notifying the White House about the Plamegate investigation, then waiting till the next morning to inform them that they had to preserve all the materials relevant to an investigation (thus giving them time to destroy damning materials).

Now Scooter Libby’s lawyers say that emails from Cheney’s office were deleted contrary to White House policy or, to use their spin (which is reversible. See? You can flip it over to the corduroy side and apply it to those electronic voting machines that registered Bush votes when voters chose Kerry):

The computer system at the White House is supposed to automatically archive emails sent by the president and his aides. For reasons that are still unclear, these emails—which may or may not be relevant to the Plame investigation—were not preserved (from the NY Daily News)

As the church lady says, how conveeeeeenient.

For reasons that are still unclear? I mean gawddamn, how much clearer do they need to be?

And one writer accuses Gonzales of tipping off the White House five days earlier.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson notes that,

if there were justice in the world, George W. Bush would have to give his State of the Union address from Oprah’s couch.... Bush should have to face the wrathful, Old Testament Oprah who subjected author James Frey to that awful public smiting the other day.