Mining Nuggets

Looking back and thinking forward

I have been looking back to blog posts from last year around this time. Did I get the idea from Tom Shugart?

As I read them I recall cold, lonely feelings of trepidation bordering almost on terror! I realize that I have come a long way since then. Even though I head out to a new position (once again!), somehow I feel more relaxed, fatalistic, or accepting about it.

What will be, will be.

I wonder what has taken place within me between then and now.

• Firstly, I survived full-time academia! I even did well. I saw what it was all about. Meetings, teaching, advising, grading, commuting, being evaluated ... so ... I can do it again.
• Second, I survived working through my rage and heart break about losses on many different levels.
• Losing: my home, professional life, and friends in Buffalo; my brother and illusions about family; Mar-Mar; Molly; my sense that I am immortal, and that all things can pass; my youth, as I realize that, yes indeed, I am approaching 60; my son as he becomes a man - his own person; and, losing my confidence - over and over again.
• Raging: at T. for bringing me to Philadelphia; my brother and illusions about family; and reality of aging.

I look over the list and think about all the pain that has passed inside and through me. My oh my, it was stormy indeed. Have those dark clouds actually moved on?

I am hesitant, bowing my head through the small opening as, once more, I stumble out of my cave.

Blinking now, my eyes adjust to the light. It is not bright and passionate. This time the light seems soft and comforting ... safe ... even a little peaceful.

I wonder ... have I finally reached stage five?

Oh, and one more thing, lest I forget.

I could never have done this (without going crazy, I mean) without the blog, and, which is more to the point, all of your cyber support out there.

Even if you did not comment - you were felt.

You know who you are!

Festschrift

Celebration. Festschrift for Steve Brown. And, yes indeed, he was surprised. Stories were shared and there I was surrounded by mathematicians and thinking, "How did I come to be included in such an interesting crowd! Little old me born far away in Bulawayo. And now here I am in Buffalo, well, in fact, Port Colborne, sipping wine in the company of mathematics geniuses."

How did I come to be included?

A few years ago I was invited to contribute a chapter in this fine book celebrating my dissertation advisor's scholarly life. How honored I was, especially since most of the book is devoted to his teachings about mathematics. And here it was, the finished product. Many of us gathered to surprise Steve in Buffalo. We came from Vermont, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Old friends joined in the festivities and a splendid time was had by all!

All that wonderful time soaking in old friends, starved for their company, eating good food, walking and talking, exposing my soul and sharing ancient histories ... 

Alone again.

Ho hum ... and now, back to the grind ... syllabus preparation for the new semester, perhaps a root canal treatment, plant watering, laundry ... and so it goes.

Ada calls to play with her new mouse ... am home again.

Surprise shuffle

Today I am shuffling off to Buffalo once again.

Just for a few days.

To soak in a few dear friends, walk in my old park, and participate in a surprise party for ...

... well, I just can't say ...

... because it is a surprise, you see.

And who knows? Perhaps the person we want to surprise might just stumble on this blog. Because life has a way of surprising us when we least expect it.

So you will just have to wait until I get back to hear about it ...

... that is, if you are at all interested.

So, cheerio, I'll be back soon.

Person(ality) of politics

What can I say?

My mind and heart is in a turmoil with the complexity of the global situation. After all, close family members have just been sent into Lebanon, or are helping out children in bomb shelters in Kiryat Shmona where katyushas fall overhead. My adolescence was affected by affiliation with Habonim, and for most of my life, all my political views were heavily influenced by a former long-time editor of the New Left Review.

It is perhaps only the last 10 years or so, that I started to grasp I have a mind of my own. I even remember the moment. I was traveling on a train bound for Albany from Buffalo on some early childhood professional business. I gazed out the window and there it was - the realization: "Hey! I can think for myself!"

Since then I have been developing my own stand.

As I try to write about all of this, I falter, stammer and stutter. I become emotional and confused. Words fail me ... and then along comes Neilochka, and writes almost exactly how I am thinking about things ...

... I say almost because he is he with all his life experiences, and I am me with all of mine.

Four years ago ...

Quote of the day:

My life was so totally different four years ago.  Kalilily Time (Thanks, Tom Shugart)

This could quite easily be turned into a meme: how has your life changed in the last four years? or something like that.

But, yes, as you can imagine, it immediately had me thinking ... now let me see ...

Four years ago I was ...

• 53
• Director
• Adjunct instructor
• Writing my book
• Walking across the English Moors
• Thinner
• Danny was my editor
• Knew absolutely nothing about blogging
• Living in Buffalo
• Walking daily in Delaware Park
• Mourning Charlie
• Playing with Molly
• Dancing with Mar-Mar
• President
• Longing to be a full-time professor
• Much less time on my hands
• A work-a-holic

And, so much less aware than I am now ...

Consider yourself tagged ... only if you are so inclined.

It's party time

 

The yard used to belong to Molly. It was clearly her domain. I know this now because since her death, there seems to be some kind of party going on outside. The butterfly bushes are full to bursting with all colors, shapes and sizes of butterflies. The birdbath has goldfinches, robins, doves, titmouse, cardinals, blue jays, cat birds, chickadees, and who knows who else drinking, bathing, splashing, singing and calling out to one another, "Hey! Bring the beer!"

Ada and I sit on the porch and watch as hummingbirds approach their feeder. First they drop down really low and observe us up close and personal. Then, with a strange little tweet, they drink the sweetened elixir I prepared for them before flying off high into the surrounding trees with an excited squeal. Ada tried to chase down one of the cicadas that was hopping in the hydrangea bush. But she really does not like to exert herself that much and after about two minutes of figuring it out she returned inside the house to have a snack.

Sometimes I call out to the squirrels dancing on the porch, "Hey! This is Molly's place! What's the matter with you?" They look at me and continue to jive, scuttling out to the flower beds to dig for bulbs. Ada and I look on silently. Tears roll down my cheeks as I remember Molly jumping two feet off the ground to bring down a huge yellow butterfly. She looked as free as could be with the sunlight shining on her ginger coat. I walk over to the spot under the trees at the end of garden path where I buried her ashes. The piece of coreopsis I transplanted over her grave is blooming and I have a feeling, with all the goings on lately, that the chipmunks probably burrow under there to torment her soul. "Hi Molly," I whisper under my breath. "There is complete animal chaos going on in our yard, sweet kitty. I don't know what you'd think about it all, sweetheart."

Ada jumps onto my lap and I caress her furry body with long, firm strokes as we watch the frivolities of all the little critters outside. As I look up I see a doe stroll over to the bird feeder. A little further away stand two smaller deer - her children. It feels like a Disneyland party. Am just waiting for Ada to break into song as the hummingbird hovers down low once again to check her out.

Instead, Ada yawns. A large, wide yawn. She jumps off my lap onto the porch, and then, rolling onto her side, stretches her right paw out in front and sets about basking lazily in the afternoon sun.

"Hello, is there anybody out there?"

Quote of the day:

How many of us are reading each other any more anyway? Frank Paynter

Well, I must say, FP got me thinking about that (but then he always gets me thinking about something).

And Winston got me thinking about it too ...

... oh well .... Whatever!

The stand I will take

Story of the day:

Neil tells his story here and here.

_________________________________________________________________________

The complex chaos of politics ... and yet it affects our lives in the most fundamental ways. It really does not matter what my opinion is or is not. It matters the actual stand I take or do not. The agony and rage of the human condition is overwhelming.

Two years ago I left Israel after visiting my family. I was terribly sad to leave them and travel across the thousands of miles back to America once again. My mother was aged, and I missed her just as soon as we bade farewell. My hand fell to my side as I stood on the shuttle bus carrying me and many others to the waiting plane, tears of sorrowful parting flowing down my cheeks. Suddenly I felt little fingers grasping hold of my hand and I looked down. A small toddler in a stroller had reached out her hand to mine and she was looking up at me anxiously. I smiled through my tears and then noticed her mother smiling back at me. She was dressed in traditional clothing with a hijab covering her head. We were flying together on the same plane to America, me, an Israeli-American atheist and she a Christian or Muslim Arab woman. We continued our short journey on the bus, Arab child and I hand in hand, her mother smiling at us both all the way.

I refuse to enter into raging, agonizing arguments on the Internet or through my blog. I would rather listen to the stories that all people tell me, all the while looking into their eyes with empathy and compassion.

This is the stand I will take.

I will work tirelessly through my actions, writings, dreams, awareness-raising, and aspirations to rid, at the very least, my mini-universe from the disease of patriarchy. For all children, nay, all of humanity are punished - all suffer - from the violence and dominance that is patriarchy.

And if along the way, as I tell my own story, my experience of my life, you feel hurt by that, I will try and understand that your survival affects how you hear me.

And I will remind myself of these things over and over again, especially when darkness rages all around.

This is the stand I will take.

Virginia, I become you

Quote of the day:

Best friend, my well spring in the wilderness. George Eliot

_____________________________________________________

My dear Virginia,

How much I like getting letters from you. With what zest do they send me to meet the day. So much do I like getting them, that I keep them as the last letter to open of my morning post, like a child keeps the bit of chocolate for the end -

That's one of the openings of a letter from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, September 2, 1925. I received a book of their letters to each other on Tuesday, and have been reading them on and off all week - into the wee hours last night. God I adore those women - the way they write, how they looked, who they were! Have loved them both forever. And am so enjoying reading their letters.

It is like with a really good movie (of course, The Hours was such a one, and of course, for me, the Virginia Woolf character).

... I get so into it that I feel I become them for awhile ... or, at least, one of them ... if only I was half as literary and creative as Virginia Woolf - with half her beauty and courage ...

... although, I think I sometimes have the tendency to be almost as wistful and sad as she ...

It's my pleasure

Quotes for today:

... from one of my favorite books, The Birth of Pleasure by Carol Gilligan:

I have been following the voice of pleasure, and it has lead me into a discussion of trauma ... but it was with girls that I saw most deeply into how the ability to trust one's experience can be systematically undermined and, at the extremes, broken as an inner compass gives way to an outer reading that is at once adaptive and misleading.

Read historically, the Garden of Eden story records the move into patriarchy; we see its hierarchy being established; God over Adam, Adam over Eve, the serpent at the bottom. It is hierarchy secured by the prohibition against knowing what you know through experience, a prohibition that creates the need for a priesthood. In the beginning, in the opening of Genesis, God is ruach - a breath, a wind, a voice, a spirit that pervades the universe. God has no image, no body, no sex, no place in the human world of male and female. Once God becomes "He," melech - king of the universe, or Father - we know we are in patriarchy.

The tale of Psyche and Cupid ends with the birth of a daughter named Pleasure. Her birth becomes a moment of epiphany when we read the myth as showing a way out of patriarchy, because a daughter holds the promise of transformation, and pleasure lies at its center. The essence of love is love, and love by its very nature is free. Freeing love means releasing it to find its own form. Like wind and water, love crosses borders and boundaries; when we fall in love, we fall into relationship and out of categories, because love is always particular. This person.

Collectively we have moved to the edge of possibility; it has become possible to envision a democracy that is not patriarchal; it is more difficult to imagine a love that is passionate without becoming tragic.

Leaving patriarchy for love or democracy sounds easy, even inviting, but it is psychically as well as politically risky; at least at first, it seems to mean giving up power and control. Hope is the most dangerous emotion; it invites us to imagine an escape from tragedy, it tempts what we have come to think of as fate. The hope of the new, the nakedness of standing without a frame heightens our awareness of vulnerability and, with it, the temptation to return at whatever cost to the known. The birth of Pleasure, like any new life, is an invitation to creativity.

Maybe love is like rain. Sometimes gentle, sometimes torrential, flooding, eroding, joyful, steady, filling the earth, collecting in underground springs. When it rains, when we love, life grows. To say there are two roads, one leading to life and one to death and therefore choose life, is to say in effect: choose love. We have a map. We know the way.

There ...

... with a deep sigh, breathing in and out slowly and surely, ...

... I rest my case ...