Hey Jude

I can't remember where I read it, the idea that since evolution and change is so intrinsic in the universe, probably even the laws of nature evolve over time. What we think is set in concrete is just as changeable as anything else. Even the laws of nature.

I say YES! I say YAY!! Let the whole of "reality" be ever-shifting, ever-changing. That "truth" makes anything possible, really anything. I love that.

Just this morning I read about how doctors are figuring out that sometimes cancer goes away on its own. Well, it can, and does - probably more often than they think, since they're used to studying only the cancers that continue to develop.

I find this story incredibly encouraging - not that I'm counting on this new "truth" to mean that all my friends and clients who have cancer will suddenly be completely cured, unfortunately, no I won't go there. It's the tendency of cancer to grow, but how amazing to learn that it doesn't always get worse. Wow.

That gives me hope for all supposed lost causes. Thank you so much all you intrepid cancer researchers. May your efforts prevail!!

My Dream Job

It is a dream job - well - except for the volunteer part.

OK, there's no money changing hands, but still, I am going to love being a docent (tour guide) for the upcoming Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at National Geographic.

I am required to learn all about the individual pieces in the show, but will also be delving deep into the story of the first Emperor of China. I've read a lot, seen a couple of great Chinese movies about him, but for this show, since I'm allowed - encouraged even! - to be a know-it-all, I would like to actually BE a know it all, instead of bluffing, as I admit I sometimes do.

There is nothing my brain likes better than learning followed by time to think about it all. There's nothing my ego likes better than standing around lecturing about all the things I'm thinking about. I get to do both bits, plus this job will provide me with a captive audience. I've got it made!

BTW I'm not saying I don't love massage. I do, so so much. But the docent gig will be great fun, absolutely different, and will get me off the Hill every week. Oh yeah!

As Is

My feet, reversed and distorted in this reflection shot. I'm wearing decidedly non-glamorous sneakers.

One great thing about living a long life is that only over time can a person gather lots of experiences. Only over time can a person access some perspective on those experiences, only over time can a person develop wisdom. When I see that someone in his/her thirties has written a memoir, I have to laugh. I know that the society I live within is built on the idea that old age should be avoided at all costs, so perhaps that leads folks to believe a memoir is best written before the age of forty. Isn't that sad? A memoir of young adulthood is not a story of a whole life, is it? Seems premature unless the assumption is that any life experience occuring after age forty is not worth writing about. I guess!

I've broken no laws by growing older, I've done nothing wrong; I just haven't died yet. Why is getting older seen as so heinous? Why should I be ashamed, and try to hide my age? Why??

Looking through my boxes of photos, thinking back on who I was during all the past lifetimes of this particular life - the one I'm now living - I've been reminded how much better suited I am, temperamentally, to middle age. I have a feeling I'll be even more at home as an old lady, in spite of all the physical changes that are a part of aging.

I'm all done with this bout of reminiscence. Onwards & upwards. Though, it was fun slogging through the dropped leaves of past decades, and lots of fun sharing pictures here. I would LOVE to see old pics on other blogs, hint, hint.

I like being 56, almost 57. I love looking at the old pics but I'm just as happy looking into the mirror at who I am now, a bit worse for wear perhaps, no longer svelte or glamorous, but comfortable, healthy, and cheerful. As is, that's me. As is. Love it or leave it, people! Oh yeah!


Here is a pic of my Fluevog angel boots, all glittered up. In October, 1999, I was a guest high priestess/master of ceremonies at the Halloween/Samhain ritual held for the Reclaiming community in Vancouver, British Columbia. That ritual, the Spiral Dance, was the biggest event of the year, hence the need for seriously great ritual outfits for visiting priestesses. I loved those boots.

One or Two Things

My friends Doug, Nate and Michael, performing a Very Strange Version of the Wichita Lineman at my wedding.

ONE OR TWO THINGS

1.
Don’t bother me.
I’ve just
been born.

2.
The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.


This is my third grade picture. That hair. OMG.

3.
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

4.
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.

5.
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning — some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.

6.
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.

7.
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“Don’t love your life
too much,” it said,

and vanished
into the world.

--Mary Oliver


This is Jake when he was about 6 months old, on the porch of our house in Glen Park, a neighborhood in San Francisco.

What is Remembered, Lives

This is one of my favorite pics from my childhood. That's me, the one smiling at the camera. You won't find a lot of pics of me smiling, gazing into the lens. I always have hated having my picture taken. My sister Hannah understands. She always used to say "It is hard to pose for a piece of film going by." Now it's even a stranger experience, being pixilated. Pixilized? Digitized? Digilated? What is the right verb here?

My father was a very good photographer. He rarely took posed pictures of us, and in fact he often told us not to pose. I believe I am smiling in the above picture because, due to my contrarian nature, I decided at the last second to break the rule. I do look adorable, though, as do we all. The tall woman is my oldest sister Karen. Nice coat, eh? She is so MAD MEN, isn't she? Deborah is gazing up at her, as she frequently did, and my "Irish twin" sister Hannah is the other adorable little girl. Look at those cars! Man. I am SO OLD.

Sometimes my father posed us for formal portraits (see below.) Looking at that second picture, I have to agree with my old man: posed pictures tend to make the people look stiff and lifeless, as if posing for a daguerreotype. He felt, and I agree, that it's much more interesting to capture people in the midst of living life.

Karen isn't in the pic below, but my brother Josh has arrived. We're in Kansas City now; it is 1961. Deborah is the tall older sister, that's me in the bad glasses, and my sister Hannah looking somewhat discouraged on the right side of the pic. Becky Gamble, an adopted member of our family peeks over Deborah's shoulder on the left. We are dressed up for Shabbat dinner, something we did when I was young. I loved Shabbat dinners. We all tried our hardest to put aside our cares and worries, and just enjoy ourselves. Clearly though in the pic below, we were all still wrapped up in our own thoughts and concerns. I always laugh when I look at that picture.

My sister Karen died from leukemia on October 28, 1988. She was intelligent, classy, passionate about the arts and politics, so proud to be an intellectual Jew, well read. She was a great cook and loved to laugh - and - she was kind of a snob, too. She had style. I remember and love you, Karen. Always will, I promise. Fly high sister, fly high.

Happy Saturday!

Everything's Jake

My little cheap camera does not like taking snaps of physical photographs. It always blurs the image ... sorry about that. This was taken in San Francisco when Jake was quite young. He sneezed at the perfect second. Isn't it sweet?

I took a walk around Takoma Park yesterday. They call it "the Berkeley of the DC area". Oh yeah.

I saw a sign in the window of the pet store announcing that they sell products for "socially conscious pets." So - your dog and cat must be socially conscious? For heaven's sake.

At another shop, there were onesies for sale that said, "Stop the killing, stop the war - for me, please." That's an awful big burden to put on an infant, don't you think? My goodness, even newborns must advocate against war, before they can speak, before they can even crawl. Poor little things. Put a dollar in the therapy jar for those kids - because if it starts within weeks of their birth, you can only imagine the heavy responsibilities their parents will load onto their tiny shoulders by the time they're in kindergarten. Sheesh.

When I first came to the DC area I lived for two years in Takoma Park. I thought I would enjoy it since I am a serious lefty and felt I would be amongst like minds. Maybe I should say I am a lefty, but not so serious that I think my pet has to be socially conscious, that my baby has to save the world.

Do you think that sort of self-righteous indignation is a veneer that covers a pervasive species-wide self hatred? I wonder. I firmly believe we human beings are definitely the most self-critical species on earth.

On the right side of the political spectrum all the hatred aimed at gay people or non-Christians, for instance, is a different way of expressing our tendency to loathe homo sapiens. I'm a lone voice out there, it seems, always defending my species. We do the best we can and though we often make a mess of things, I don't believe we're any worse than, say, beavers or grasshoppers - except that we have opposable thumbs and overly developed frontal cortexes, which enables us to make the biggest messes you can imagine. But we're not trying to be awful. Well, maybe Dick Cheney tries, but most folks? We're just living our lives as best we can.

Live and let live, I say. That thought form rings true to me and shows me, in no uncertain terms, why I really disliked living in Takoma. Yuck!

As for the nostalgia, it began to fade yesterday when I realized what's actually going on is that I'm grieving the loss of Jake. I really miss him. I loved that dog so much!

Happy Friday and weekend y'all. I'm off to work. Hope you have a good one.


Here I am on a windy day in San Francisco. I think I'm squinting because of the sun and wind, but I do appear quite hauty, as if I could be a citizen of Takoma Park. I'm about 33 or 34. My t-shirt (loved that shirt) is a Roy Lichenstein print. The cartoon character woman is saying, "Nuclear war?? What about my career??" The man is saying, "You can get another job, darling."

The Nostalgist

I had no luck chasing away my fit of nostalgia by focusing on the now, something I tried all day yesterday. By evening I realized that resistance was futile, so I abandoned all attempts to banish the nostalgia, turned 180 degrees to a strategy to indulgence. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

From the back of my closet, I retrieved many boxes of old, non-digital pictures, went through them one by one. There is something so great about holding actual physical photographs in hand, as opposed to viewing digitized pics on screen, (though in fact today I'm going to digitize some of them. Nostalgia or no nostalgia, it would be fun to share a few old images here: Jake sneezing while wearing a fez, me as a 20-something juicy hot girl, the Martini Club from my days at the San Francisco Symphony, my BFF and I roller skating at Lake Tahoe.)

One interesting aspect of this bout of nostalgia is that it didn't stop my urge to purge. I ended up throwing away dozens of old pics - of people I didn't recognize, or blurry "art" pics I took, once upon a time, while stoned. I threw away lots of pictures I took when my ex husband and I renovated our Bernal Hill house. Why was I saving them anyway?

Today I'm going to continue indulging my nostalgia. I'm going up to Takoma Park where I lived when I first moved to DC at the end of 1998, walk around, shop at the thrift stores.

I hope this phase passes sooner rather than later! Onwards & upwards? Please??