Acts of God

Posted on August 27, 2012 | 2 comments

If I were the kind of person who reads divine judgment into random weather events, I could have had a field day with the news that Isaac was threatening the Republican National Convention. It saddens me to think that pulpits across the country would surely have been ringing yesterday had the Democratic National Convention been in the projected path of the storm.

As it is, media vultures have noted that Isaac’s landfall could be an embarrassing reminder of the institutional failures that magnified the disastrous effects of Katrina. To my mind, contrasting images of hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast communities and political partisans in extravagant celebration will be far more disturbing.

I’m not looking forward to either convention, as it means I won’t even be able to listen to my beloved NPR station for at least two weeks, possibly more depending on how much pre- and post- attention these non-events garner. For decades now, both conventions have been closely-scripted rubber-stamping parties and vulgar orgies of pseudo-patriotic excess. Watching them (or even hearing about them) is kind of like watching the dog hump the ottoman.

I’m actually disappointed that Isaac has veered off to the west. I had entertained fantasies of Isaac causing the RNC to be cancelled altogether, followed by a hurricane in the Atlantic that strikes the North Carolina coast in time to cancel the DNC as well. If God really were in the business of using weather to comment on human affairs, that would be the surest proof.

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Random acts

Posted on August 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

As I took my daily walk in the neighborhood this morning, a car pulled up beside me and a woman offered me a bottle of water. She had a cooler and a boy (who looked to 7 or so) with her, and she told me they were driving around handing out water bottles.

By the time I thought to ask her why, she had driven off. I encountered others on my route — runners, walkers, people working in their yards — who had also been on the receiving end of her beneficence. We raised our bottles to one another cheerfully as we passed, big, goofy smiles of recognition on our faces.

I have no idea what lay behind this woman’s actions this morning, but some intriguing possibilities come to mind. It might have been a project for school, or something inspired by a church program. Maybe the idea came from a movie or television show — perhaps even a radio show. Or it might have been prompted by something in a book or magazine.

My chances of finding out are pretty slim. I didn’t recognize the woman or the child, and I doubt I would if I saw them again, unless they were handing out water. I don’t even know if they live in our neighborhood.

What impressed me most is the warmth I felt when I accepted that bottle, from the smile and wave we exchanged as she drove off. That warmth stayed with me, the bottle in my hand a continuing reminder. The feeling was renewed every time I saw someone else holding a similar bottle, with the smiles and nods that passed between us. We all had more in common than usual, thanks to that woman.

Not only did her gift make each of us feel good individually, it disposed us to share that good feeling with others. It also created a kind of affinity group among those who had been recipients of her kindness, and we recognized each other with a simple joy that reinforced the original gift experience we shared.

Such a small and uncomplicated thing to do, handing out bottles of water. None of us were parched or dehydrated, but accepting that gift of water changed each of our days. Water is a humble yet universal symbol of shared embodiment, but I think the real power was in the act itself, in the giving and in the receiving.

In the words of my favorite rabbi, “Go and do likewise.”

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Monday the umpteenth

Posted on August 13, 2012 | 2 comments

My friend Murphala over at FWY&S is having a bad day, and she suspects it may be because today is Monday the 13th. I say she’s half-right: she’s having a bad day because it’s a Monday.

For decades (if not centuries), Monday has been viewed with trepidation and despair. After all, it’s the day we return to work (or school) after our weekly respite (the weekend). It’s often the day we go back to the grind after vacation, though I’ve noticed in recent years that school corporations (in the U.S., at least) seem to take great pains not to begin the new school year on a Monday. Could it be that they’ve observed some truth in the old Russian adage that one should never begin anything important on a Monday?

You may be tempted to dismiss this as random coincidence or blind superstition, but consider the following:

  • Have you noticed how much better the week is after a three-day weekend that includes a Monday holiday? This can’t simply be due to the shorter (four-day) week, because weeks preceding a three-day weekend that begins with a Friday holiday are downright hellish.
  • In everyone’s mind, summer really begins the day after Memorial Day, school calendars and summer solstice notwithstanding. (The same can be said for Labor Day and fall.)
  • In sensible places like Canada and Great Britain, the day after Easter (a Monday) is a national holiday.
  • Songwriters have little good to say about Monday: “Monday, Monday” by The Mamas & the Papas, “Rainy Days and Mondays” by The Carpenters, “I Don’t Like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats, and “Manic Monday” by The Bangles, for example.
  • According to the Urban Dictionary, that hip barometer of society, Monday is bad news all around — the word can even be used as a very nasty (though somewhat cryptic) insult.

So here’s to the end of another Monday and hoping that the rest of the week is better. After all, there’s nowhere to go from here but up!

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Writing that inspires: Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Posted on August 9, 2012 | 6 comments

I’ve been reading T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and at times his prose is breathtaking. Here’s what he says about his journey down the Red Sea by boat from Suez to Jidda:

By day we lay in shadow; and for great part of the glorious nights we would tramp up and down the wet decks under the stars in the steaming breath of the southern wind. But when at last we anchored in the outer harbor, off the white town hung between the blazing sky and its reflection in the mirage which swept and rolled over the wide lagoon, then the heat of Arabia came out like a drawn sword and struck us speechless. (p. 49)

I feel like I’m there, standing on the ship’s deck beneath a noonday sun so bright that all color seems muted, trying to hold firm against the assault of that intense heat.

Lawrence describes dozens of different types of sand and stone throughout the book, the way they lie together in valleys or tower over the landscape in layered escarpments.  I can see them in my mind’s eye, and I find myself longing to see them with the eyes of my face as well, to feel them beneath my camel’s feet and hear the sounds they make when traversed by wind and body.

The swept ground was so flat and clean, the pebbles so variegated, their colors so joyously blended that they gave a sense of design to the landscape; and this feeling was strengthened by the straight lines and sharpness of the hills. They rose on each hand regularly, precipices a thousand feet in height of granite-brown and dark porphyry-coloured rock, with pink stains; and by a strange fortune these glowing hills rested on hundred-foot bases of the cross-grained stone, whose unusual colour suggested a thin growth of moss. (p. 72)

His language often evokes images of water, reflecting both the incongruent influence of water on the terrain and the necessary preoccupation with water that underlies the thoughts and actions of desert dwellers.

The hills got lower, with the sand banked up against them in greater drifts, till even the crests were sand-spattered, and at last drowned beyond sight. So as the sun became high and painfully fierce, we led out upon a waste of dunes, rolling southward for miles down hill to the misty sea, where it lay grey-blue in the false distance of the heat. (p. 93)

Such descriptions remind me of the incredible cinematography in Lawrence of Arabia (one of my favorite films of all time), and I realize that the movie’s vast panoramas and sweeping score attempt to express the ineffable qualities of Lawrence’s evocative words. This is what he writes about the great interior expanse of the Arabian peninsula:

We, ourselves, felt tiny in it, and our urgent progress across its immensity was a stillness or immobility of futile effort. (p. 238)

Alas, thus does my own writing seem some days!

(All quotations from the 1997 Wordsworth Edition.)

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Weird conversation at 5:00 a.m.

Posted on August 2, 2012 | 2 comments

Child [at my bedside]:
Mama?

Me:
Mmmm?

Child:
I had a nightmare. Can I sleep with you?

Me:
Mmm-hmm.

Child:
Okay. [Retrieves bedding, climbs in next to me.] I’m sorry you couldn’t sleep.

Me:
I was asleep.

Child:
Oh, good. I’m glad something didn’t wake you up.

Me:
You woke me up.

Child:
Oh. Right.

 

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Saved by the cat

Posted on July 31, 2012 | 4 comments

Sometime in the last 24 hours, we’ve inadvertently let a fly into the house.

I am more tolerant of arthropods than most, both inside and outside the house (see posts about spiders and ants). Around here, unwanted bugs are routinely captured and relocated. Just last week, my daughter discovered a small (only about an inch long – must have been a female) common stag beetle (Pseudolucanus sp.) on the upstairs landing. My daughter hollered for me to come get it, unable to decide if she was more afraid of the beetle or for the beetle. (The cat had also taken an interest in the matter.)

Male common staghorn on our porch awning
(close to actual size, which was 2 inches)

Two notable exceptions to this policy of arthropod amnesty are mosquitoes and flies. I am a mosquito magnet; anyone within a quarter mile of me will not be bothered by mosquitoes because they are all biting me. Mosquitoes in the house must be ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed so I will not be covered with huge red welts when I wake up in the morning.

Flies are just plain annoying. They land on your food. They land on you. They buzz around your head and in the corner of windows and drive you BONKERS. Between the sanitation concerns and the annoyance factor, they rub me all wrong. I do try to let them out of the house, but they are incredibly uncooperative: if I open the window, they bash themselves silly on the pane above (or below) the opening. If I open the door, they leave the room. The whole thing soon spirals out of control, and I end up rampaging through the house like a wounded elephant, bellowing and swatting at everything that moves.

Today, however, the cat has gotten into the act, so I don’t have to. She’s been dashing from window to window in pursuit of the fly, clambering over furniture and behind shades. She leaps at it when it zips past; a little while ago she bounded up the stairs after it. I figure she’ll catch it eventually, and in the meantime, she’s kept it too busy to buzz my head or land on me.

Now, if I can only get her to chase mosquitoes…

The cat in action
(not actual size)

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What I’ve learned from The Rockford Files

Posted on July 26, 2012 | 12 comments

We have been watching The Rockford Files on Netflicks with the kids lately, and it’s been an absolute joy. The cars, the clothes, the pay phones: all those wonderful relics of a time that seems almost horse-and-buggyish now, even to us adults.

Watching the show all these years later, I’m aware of a lot of things that slipped right by me when I first watched it as a kid with my family. Here are some of the things I’ve learned from Jim Rockford over the years:

  • A quick tongue and quicker wit are more useful than a gun.
  • Good guys don’t always finish first, but that doesn’t mean they finish last.
  • Not everyone who’s done time has committed a crime, though it’s hard to sort them out because everyone in jail claims to be innocent.
  • People are often deeply biased against those who have served time.
  • Most of the shows I watched in childhood were set in southern California. (This is in contrast to most of the shows I watched as a young adult, which were set in the Pacific Northwest or Toronto.)
  • I have survived some pretty bizarre fashion trends.

Here are the things my children comment on the most:

  • The awesome theme music.
  • The relative inconvenience of pay phones, compared to cell phones.
  • The car chase scenes.
  • The appalling fact that no one wears seat belts (especially given the car chase scenes).
  • The puzzling fact that nearly everyone is a casual smoker.
  • The laughable lack of airport security.

I’d forgotten how delightful James Garner is in this role – too compassionate and human to be hard-boiled, but tough and crafty enough to hold his own in the company of genuine criminals. He plays Rockford as an honest man living on the edge of respectability and financial solvency, which lends a faint air of desperation to his choices. We’re never entirely sure how much he enjoys acting the gambler and con artist and how much he just does to survive. I find myself once again enchanted by his warmth, his wry sense of humor, and his disarming frankness, and I’m pleased that my children have succumbed to his charms as well.

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Found poetry: book titles

Posted on July 23, 2012 | 2 comments

I found a list of new book titles at the library and started fiddling around with them. Here’s what I ended up with after about 20 minutes:

close your eyes
at the last minute
dare me
to kill you twice

once burned
the bones of the long earth are forever
time without time
the last victim dies a stranger

shadow of night
dreams the odd apocalypse
the survivor a judgement call
fallen angel whispers in the wind

friends forever
the next best thing
if I can’t have you
close your eyes

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Amazing grace

Posted on July 20, 2012 | 2 comments

This week I attended the funeral of a relative with whom I was not particularly close. As the minister gave the eulogy, I found myself wondering if I was at the right funeral. The deceased was known in the family for his sharp tongue and the casual cruelty with which he wielded it. He was ruthlessly tyrannical with his closest relations and given to acting out of spite and apparent malice.

The minister spoke of a generous man who cared about his family and gave selflessly to the community. Indeed, I learned a great many things about him during the funeral: organizations to which he belonged, leadership positions he had held in the community, that he had once worked for NASA. I was amazed.

Granted, I had had as little to do with him as possible for the last thirty years, and a lot can happen to a person in that length of time. I found myself wishing I had known the man the minister was talking about, because he didn’t bear any resemblance to the unpleasant person I had pretty much avoided since high school.

I was especially moved when the minister gave thanks in prayer for this man’s life and the ways in which God was visible in it. By that point in the service, I was beyond incredulity and actually able to listen to the message in the minister’s words. Through mysterious grace, I was able to see this relative in a completely different light, perhaps even to see him, in some dim fashion, the way God might have seen him. And through that same miraculous grace, I was able at last to join the minister in giving thanks for this man and the curious ways in which the Spirit had worked through him.

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Day of blessing

Posted on July 13, 2012 | 6 comments

Today is a very special day: it is Friday, and it is the 13th day of the month. Three Fridays fall on the 13th this year, 13 weeks apart from each other. Today is the third and final Friday the 13th of 2012. You have to admit that’s pretty cool, from a mathematical perspective if nothing else.

The origins of various superstitions surrounding Friday the 13th are not clear, nor are those superstitions universal. Folklorists have recorded several theories explaining the supposed unluckiness of the date, all of which fall apart when correlated with other historical information. Superstitions, both good and bad, surrounding the number 13 and the sixth day of the week are well documented throughout history, but the two don’t seem to be linked until the beginning of the 20th century. Ironically, it would seem that the phenomenon of Friday the 13th, as we know it today, is a product of modern thinking.

I’ve never thought of it as unlucky myself, and once I learned about various pre-20th century associations with the number and the day, I started to view it as a day of special significance to me as a woman.

Friday is named for the chief goddess in the Norse pantheon, and is the only day of the week that bears a goddess’ name. I suppose this could be the reason why Friday seems like such a grrrrl power day to me.

There are 13 lunar months in a solar year, so the number 13 is often associated with the moon. Women and the moon are frequently connected in folklore and tradition for a variety of reasons, and many cultures in the West personify the moon as female. (I have felt an affinity with the moon since I was a small child, long before I knew any of that stuff.)

So the coincidence of these two calendrical facts has led me to view Friday the 13th as a special day for most of my life. (No doubt my tendency to flout tradition plays into it a bit, too.)

And if you need more proof that Friday the 13th is anything but unlucky, I offer this: it has been raining here – softly, gently, steadily – since before 6:00 a.m. In this year of record-breaking heat and drought, that is a blessing.

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