Jousting with my own mind

I've been so busy --

-- moving;

-- jousting with my own mind, which is always either a lose-lose or a win-win?!;

-- and making some DVDs on a subject on which I'm interested. So haven't been posting here.

Just when I was getting a few readers too!

It's HOT today in Washington. Haze over the monuments.

Hmm, that's all for now! I'm out of the habit of writing! :)

Coke incident

I have a friend, "M" I'll call her.

"M" doesn't drive, and she is not in the best health, so our grocery shopping trips are done together -- I provide the car, she provides wonderful company.

Which sounds like I don't, in return, provide wonderful company, but just provide the car! -- which M would say is not the case.

She would say that, because she's a 'fan' friend -- you have friends who are your fan, they are on your side, they see all your good points though realistically.

The little things that mean a lot in a friend, like spilled maple syrup... once we got breakfast at a McDonald's drive-thru when we were on the way to an appointment late, and I somehow spilled the little packet of maple syrup on ME rather than on the hotcakes.

It was one of those times you're just falling apart for various stresses, and I can't describe the gentleness and helpfulness with which she helped clean off both the syrup and my frantic mood. The love. The laughter. Little things store deeply in my psyche in friendships.

M is 'house poor' -- has a beautiful large home completely paid for, but little spending money, fixed income. Whenever we go out she asks me to buy her a Coke or a vegetarian platter at our favorite restaurant, or whatever. She asks because she and I feel comfortable with each other and know each others' circumstances.

She felt loved yesterday, but by such a little thing that it's hard for me to understand. Yesterday I ran into CVS pharmacy to pick up some film, she asked if I could buy her a large bottle of Coke, and yet I suddenly sensed a discomfort, an embarrassment at asking.

Usually I don't sense those feelings in her at all.

She said to get the diet Coke, caffeine free.

I went into CVS, my film wasn't ready, and none of the bottles there were caffeine-free. Cans were caffeine-free, but she prefers bottles to cans.

So I came back to the car and suggested we go somewhere else. She said, "I'm so thirsty, let's just go thru McDonald's."

We went thru the McDonald's drive-thru. She told me that by the way it would have been fine if I'd gotten the caffeine bottle, or the cans.

I went back into the CVS to get my film, and I figured she still wanted Coke. I debated the bottle in which she doesn't like the caffeine, or the cans in which she doesn't like the can.

I got both. And my film.

Went back to the car, put the bottle and 12 pack of cans in the back seat, and she said, "Oh is that for me?" I said, "of course!" She said, "you got me all that, after getting me Coke already at McDonald's?"

I got in the car, and she had a touched look on her face.

M, I suddenly saw, needed to feel that the little things she asks me to buy for her are much less than what I want to buy for her. Are much less than she could ask me for and I would still be happy to spend for her. Is that how a little thing transmogrifies into a big deeper thing under the surface?

For her friendship, a car and a little money are no recompense. For the maple syrup incident, feeling cared for when I needed a friend's mothering is uncompensatable. Just a little story of little things that have built part of a friendship that started 15 years ago, and has continued and will continue, always!

What if I read in a book somewhere that if you get it in your mind that you can't be alive internally or relate to people or relate to life at the deepest level of your innermost atom of your cells, because of life beating you down in whatever way life has to beat people down --

-- what if I read that in a book somewhere, and the book said that if you get that in your mind, you can go ahead and be alive internally and relate to people and relate to life at the deepest level of your innermost atom of your cells.

What if the book you read that in was the bible, or the Quran, or the Book of Life. It's true.

I know it's true. I just read it in a book somewhere. The book of the smartest wisest part of my mind. :)

Fatten up

I was out of town for three days with three wonderful traveling companions, my daughter and two women friends visiting here from France.

They exclaimed with surprise about seeing what they had heard about, how there is a much larger percentage of overweight Americans than overweight people in France. They really noticed, and I began to notice. I guess the official statistic is that 60-some percent of Americans are overweight. And I could lose weight myself, so I'm not trying to sound above this problem!

One of the French women, Fanny (pronounced with the accent on the second syllable) eats very consciously and lightly. Last night at dinner, at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, she ordered one egg, with a side of green beans :).

Yesterday we went to a 'Sbarro' restaurant, & Fanny ordered a salad at the counter. The man handed her a huge extra complimentary piece of garlic bread wrapped in aluminum foil and said, "Here, you need to fatten up." She quickly handed it to me -- the woman in the group who probably strikes her as already a fat American!

Oh dear! :)

Helicopters

We live right on the edge of Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Virginia. And on edge is how the city feels these days.

I had a metaphor about the city come to my mind this weekend. Our neighbors were having a huge party Saturday night and at some point in the evening it spilled out onto their patio and back yard.

I had gone to bed early, but was awakened around midnight by loud voices, frequent sudden spurts of yelling, and constant laughter.

This was making for a lousy sleep, in view of the fact that a helicopter started loudly circling the Pentagon, which is just down the hill from our house, feeling like it was breaking the sound barrier at 6:30 a.m. the next morning, Sunday, though I didn't know that was going to happen on the other end of my night.

Our other neighbors usually call the police when a loud party goes on past 11:00 p.m., but apparently they hadn't called.

I never like calling the police about loud parties, since I deal with them too often in traffic court. I went to the back door thinking: "If I slam the door, not too loudly, it will give a subtle message to the neighbors."

Opening the screen door exactly halfway, then letting it slam, not too loudly, just 'nicely' slamming, felt like the polite amount. The laughter and voices continued.

I went back upstairs to the bedroom and turned on the light, thinking if they saw that someone was turning on a bedroom light, the partiers would realize they were waking up people and be immediately remorseful.

I then got in bed again and tried to sleep. I was half asleep when the voices woke me up again. Almost involuntarily I screamed out, near our open window, "oh, shut up!"

There was a temporary silence -- had they heard me? - then laughter continued.

These are all the non-recommended ways to stop a party if you really want to. The problem was, I vacillated between wimpy half-measures and bombastic yelling, and actually didn't wholeheartedly want to stop the party. They sounded like they were having a wonderful time on a beautiful night outdoors in Arlington. What would have been effective was direct, honest communication.

What I complain about around here usually, is that our area is not as full of openness and joy and personal freedom and direct honest communication as it used to be, because of all the post-9/11 changes in our area --

-- including the cement barriers around our beautiful D.C. monuments, the police curtailing of protesters at various events, and the lack of government officials directly answering direct questions, and open information from the government at an all-time low, and the lack of the press 'pressing' to uncover abuses of power whether locally or nationally.

Our capitol area is less beautiful, it is less open, it is less what it used to be, and it is a city armed for battle. Do we have to approach security with the barrier method? And it's coupled with misinformation and lack of honest communication, which leads to insecurity for all.

I think security ultimately rests upon honesty in communication more than upon barriers and stonewalling. And I disagree fundamentally with the mindset of inspecting every package, every person, every bag; putting up every barrier, every wall, every possible closure. To me that's the wrong paradigm with which to approach security, ultimately unworkable anyway, and enormously expensive.

I fell asleep sometime between the laughter and the helicopter. Sunday morning I groggily got up and stood leaning out the window watching the helicopter, its flight path taking it literally right over our house again and again. I filmed it, its blades looking like the synchronized legs of an insect somehow.

In a city caught between laughter and helicopters, more and more of us are working for the policies in the world and in our own city that we believe in, joining our power together in groups like "moveon.org".

I support some of moveon.org's policies, I don't support others. I pick and choose. I am an American who has the ability and the right to think for myself, and write my congressman, and join protests, and call radio stations, and get involved in government -- rather than jump over the cliff following a leader when I think a policy is a cliff, whether it's a Bush policy, or a moveon.org policy -- and I try in various ways to bring to the media's constant attention the stories it's not covering adequately or forcefully enough, like the genocide in Sudan continuing, continuing...

Getting involved in our world, in our mutual welfare, with direct honest communication, is the only way anyone can sleep at night, anywhere in our world, right now...

Go back, oh go back but I can't

Random poem from my journal writing this morning.

Oh self, Go back! Go back!
Go back - may I talk to you, Self?
You don't usually listen to me

Go back!, Re-do, patch up

When you go back
this time take that last exit off
from the highway you stayed on back then

That highway with no further exits,
that highway to self-destruction.

You missed the last exit off
and there had even been a sign,
"No more exits for thirty miles, for thirty years,
from this path to self-destruction".

Mommy, am I pretty?

Little girls tend to ask this. (Do little boys ask something similar, I wonder?!)

My sister and I often asked our mother if we were pretty, when we were growing up.

She would always quote that old line: "You are pretty enough for all practical purposes."

To me, that was a horrifying answer, because it implied I wasn't pretty enough for impractical purposes.

I read a joke, a different slant on practical purposes:

"A mathematician and an engineer were both standing 20 feet away from this pretty girl when they were asked, if they could only walk half the distance to the girl, then again half the remaining distance to the girl, and half the distance each time, what would they do?

The mathematician exclaimed "... I will stand right here because I can conclusively prove that I'll never reach her", whereas the engineer said, "I agree, but I can get close enough for practical purposes."

Gay; unloved; afraid to show it

I couldn't get a real sense of the man

His distant aura said
"I don't know who or how to be

how shall I be me
because you'll see
that I am gay"

I could not get a real sense of the girl
she almost seemed to feel
"I don't know how to show my real self

because you'll see that I'm unloved"

And oh what would happen
if they let their real selves
be seen
be known?

Somewhere between kindness and self-protection

Somewhere between kindness and self-protection, but where is the line...

There are people who cause us to close ourselves a little bit, and we want to be self-protective when they are around us, yet we want to be kind to them; and yet with other people, we open, we open to them.

And it's strange but sometimes we choose to be around the people who make us close a little bit, because of some neurotic need, but ideally we seek out the people around whom we open our souls.

We have these effects on others, too - some people bloom in our presence, they love how they feel around us, others feel threatened or not like they're in a good space around us.

How do we balance being sensitive to others who do not like us, and yet remain self-afirming... and how do we balance being self-protective, and yet kind, when around those who feel slightly toxic to us ?

Just worrying thoughts, this morning.

I turn to God for help on questions like these. I am not Christian, I'm not Muslem, I'm not Hindu, I'm a bit drawn to Buddhism knowing very little about it; I don't follow any of the organized religions yet in metaphor I follow all of them -- but I'm someone who turns to God. I ask, where does God stand on these issues?

I like to remember to ask God for help, and to "Ask God for the abundant blessings which he longs to give you." (Joe Madison, quote from his morning radio program).

No. I don't agree

An excerpt below from People magazine. I'm copying it because I don't agree with Mrs. Bush that wanting to help others is a "particularly American character".

Yes, Americans have that characteristic, for sure, but wanting to help others is universal human character.

Why do people say that Americans are more of (whatever) trait that of course all peoples have the whole world over? It diminishes the loveliness of any trait and diminishes America.
--------------------
From People:
The first lady said both her 23-year-old daughters, who graduated from college last year – Barbara from Yale and Jenna from the University of Texas – feel strongly about helping others. "It is certainly part of the age. They're idealistic and they wanted to help," Mrs. Bush said. "But it's a particularly American character and I admire that very much in my own girls and in the young people I've met around the country." --->

blogs

Blogs
we're all sharing together
we're describing life

- someone writes about a morning jog,
- someone writes about an evening job
- someone else writes about a leaf

I can't seem to stop reading

today I got out in sunshine,
my virtual bloglife starting
to shade my own leaves

Foundation

My life is spinning at the speed of niceness

Was I a person built on shifting sand,
on rolling rock...

a person built to please,
attune with others but
not to expect others
to attune with me,

to try too hard again and again,
am I Sisyphus pushing the bedrock
that rolls down the hill of my personality

Stopped by a police car
once again
I want to arrest my aura
of too apologetic apologizing

To wish to have been built
upon unmoving rock --
yet proudly I think I built my child, built my daughter so.

I am happy, breathless and in shock
at my offspring's traits I don't have,
I am a better producer of a person
than a person in my own right

I push bedrock up a hill again and again
Slowly building my own foundation
higher, impressive heights,
spinning bedrock up to dizzying vistas...
but Sisyphusian vistas...

Learning

I just learned of a beautiful, beautiful blog. You know how some writing just grabs you immediately.

Here's the link to a great little post there about bananas and the hidden banana peel trip-ups in smooth voices etc.: http://the-apple-pathways.blogspot.com/2005/07/bananas-mananas_112127918383740601.html

Thanks again to Josh for my learning to link -- do most people, like me, put off learning things that are so simple and would be so helpful; and, then, oh how helpful it is when someone steps in and says, "hey, here's how to do it." Another example, my friend Al noticing what trouble I have merging, and he then took an hour to practice with me.

On highways I used to stop and wait till no car was coming in the oncoming lane. I couldn't understand how one could keep going at a decent speed to merge in. Once learned, it made my life better, and the lives of honking drivers behind me on exits, no doubt.

"Little things mean a lot". Now I merge into other blogs and link into highways between cars just fine. Check out the haiku on this linked blog, too -- I was drawn in immediately to the first ones about warm dinners and aching feet, and tidy corners and tiredness.

A Serious Word About Detoxification

Realizing my former tips on detoxification through saunas and epsom salts sound a bit flakey new-agey, I wanted to write seriously for a moment on detoxification. Wow, you say, just what anyone wanted to read?!

It's an important topic, really, in view of how much our health is being affected by the onslaught of chemicals in our bodies now, a topic Bill Moyers has gotten into.

Moyers has had his fat tested for chemical load; and in view of the studies coming out about mollusks losing their ability to detoxify the heavy metals in the oceans, people are starting to wonder about what's in their bodies that shouldn't be, and how to get it out. All animals' detoxification mechanisms are being affected by toxics in the environment, not just humans'.

Detoxification is actually an interesting subject. It has to be -- kind of like Smucker's Jam (with a name like that, it has to be good!) With a subject like detoxification, it has to be interesting to broach writing about, given the connotations.

I've had to learn about how the body detoxifies pesticides, heavy metals, various foreign substances, because of the toxic exposures my family went through. I learned out of necessity -- the learning-about-toxic-exposure equivalent to taking one of those mandatory driver improvement classes perhaps?! - you just gotta do it!

Before my own personal experience, I just thought that toxic chemicals got peed out of the body. I assumed that if you breathed in a massive amount of pesticide, or took it on your veggies, or breathed the mercury-filled air that is ubiquitous, or had a more acute toxic exposure, it came out of you, one way or the other -- pee, poop, sweat, breast milk, any avenue of exit from the ole' bod.

But I learned that it's not that simple, at all. Your body has to detoxify this stuff through rather intricate biochemical processes. There are detoxification mechanisms and pathways in the body. We don't think of them usually, probably because, for one thing, the detoxification system is not a medical specialty like the immune system in immunology, or the liver in hepatology --

-- unlike with those well-known medical specialties, we don't get a lot of exposure to the idea of our body having detoxification pathways and detoxification mechanisms.

Toxicology is the field where much of the research into the detoxification system is done. Actually a lot of docs don't know a lot about the body's detoxification mechanisms, kind-of the way medical schools used to avoid nutrition, most medical schools having no or maybe just one course on nutrition, which slowly changed.

When people realized that doctors weren't the people to go to for nutrition knowledge, and started learning about nutrition elsewhere, and feeling better using their knowledge, medical schools realized they should incorporate the subject.

Food, you want to take in; chemicals foreign to the body, you don't, but when we take in chemicals, as we all do every day, some does get peed out right away, and sweated out, without going through the detoxification process, but much gets stored, and it is stored in fat cells.

Then the problem becomes for the body, how to get this stuff out of the fat cells, which is especially crucial when the chemicals are in the fat cells of organs such as the brain, the liver, doing damage.

Relatedly, the cause of the Gulf War vets has gotten a big boost with funding to research toxic effects on brain function -- the Pentagon has gone from saying that Gulf War Syndrome research should focus on the psychological aspect, to recommeding research into the toxic exposure aspect.

I hope I can be helpful on this if anyone's interested; I've talked to many doctors who specialize in environmental medicine, and I think I have the ability to put things in clear terms, sifting through their talk of things like the cytochrome P450 detoxification pathway, etc., as I've had to do to gain an understanding of how to recover my family's health after toxic exposures.

Is this enough for now? Toxically tired of this post already? :) Anyone interested in detox?

Thoreau take II

Josh made a good point, in the comments on my "Thoreau and bawdy professors" post, that Thoreau did much, besides sit and write!

I'm 'afeared' that what my prof may have, at the real heart of it, been saying, is, as Josh I think implies... It's the thinking, contemplative nature, many pursuits done in solitude, that the prof is saying would make Thoreau boring in person.

The contemplative quality in Thoreau, in any person, in most writers... is that seen as boring in a personality? Is that what my prof was disparaging?

I think Josh hit it that sitting and writing is probably not the operative quality motivating my prof's statement. Yes, he's right, Thoreau was active -- the best of both worlds, active and contemplative.

The prof's comment was a euphemism for something deeper, I think.

The dilemma is that no matter how active you are, no matter how much of your life you spend in other pursuits: whether you're Thoreau walking -- exploring nature in a depth and intensity that few have done -- or Whitman travelling America, or William Carlos Williams practicing medicine --

-- whatever active pursuits you're involved in when not writing, you still get quiet and solitary and almost in another mental state, when writing.

Does it come down to, "when writing you're writing and not doing" (a tautology if there ever was one) -- perhaps the contemplativeness that produces good writing is not great social personality fodder!

You're solitary with your thoughts, much of the time, as a writer, though probably many of your ideas come to you when you're walking or out among people.

And unfortunately I think that's what the prof meant about writers -- they're using much of their time in a certain way that isn't about being the life of the party.

Thoreau was more contemplative than many writers, and wrote about being contemplative, in part, among the other subjects of other writings. There's always that intense contemplative quality to his writing, no matter what he's contemplating. It appeals to me enormously, a depth of quiet thought, patient thought.

Perhaps the quality of contemplativeness is stereotyped in our pscyhes in negative ways.

And maybe that's why there are too many Americans watching stupid TV shows? - we're supposed to want to be popular, the life of the party - doing anything BUT thinking. Yet I believe in the 'common man', despite how "common", as in coarse and non-thinking, our culture has become.

And maybe this theory of Thoreau being boring in person is patently untrue. And most writers -- I'm not sure it's true, at all, anyway! Take a comedy writer for the Tonight show -- probably not boring in person.

Oh why did I write all this anyway, it all started with an off the cuff remark by a prof which has haunted me for years, argh. Any thoughts appreciated. Just thinking this out here.