Patti Smith Day : What a Night!

   I arrived at the Back Bay Events Theatre in time to still get a seat; one advantage of being a singleton. Some people dressed in her iconic black and white, others dressed in their casual finest and most came as they were. The first order of business was receiving your book; signed or unsigned - to be signed later. I, of course, chose unsigned to be signed post-event. This was not my first Smith Rodeo! Although it was new for them to say, more than once, that she "would not be photographed, do personalizations, nor sign anything other than M Train"!

   A seat in the lower half of the theater on the right side near the aisle was free. The woman in the aisle seat and I engaged in conversation. She was born in SF, which came up when I mentioned where I last saw Patti. She now lives in Cambridge, but had spent decades in Santa Fe and still owns a home there. She is an archeologist by training, but currently the Director of Publishing for the Peabody Museum. We discussed many things; music, books, art, cities and discovered we had many people in common. The favorite photograph in her office is of Owen Lattimore (my step-grandfather) shaving outside his tent in Mongolia. She used it in a book she published and offered to send me a copy of the photo.

   Finally some music plays and out comes a female representative from the Mayor's Office to read the below proclamation! Each time she arrives at an AND, the crowd wildly cheers, until well after the following WHEREAS and into the next clause. The reasoning and curation behind the list of Ms. Smith's accomplishments are well worn stones in these fans fingers, but we cheer on 'til the end!

  Then Patti arrives! She is girlish with her embarrassment and pride. She holds the proclamation above her head and all but twirls. And yes, she's wearing layers of black and white, with black jeans and boots on bottom. Hair natural grey, not dyed the recent brown, for this book tour. When she finally speaks she announces that she came early to Boston and spent the day in JP with her friend Patti Hudson who "owns Monumental Cupcakes", so "I'm sharing the day ~ for two Patti's"! She continued by saying that her dear friend Michael Stipe (REM), texted her from Paris too, with the news of it being Patti Smith Day in Boston, and this thrilled her.

   The podium the Harvard Book Store (with a placard of the cover of her book on it) is set up to the left hand side of the stage with a mic. Patti, has however, decided to wear a mic and spends almost the entire hour in the center of the stage. Well not entirely. She apologizes several times for not being able to stand still. She says she's always been that way, along with the rest of the boys in her grade school. Unable to stop fidgeting, "They'd probably give me a pill today,"  but "I've always had extra energy." Thank god for that, as we've all benefitted by what that energy has allowed her to produce in so many mediums.

  She says she'll read for a little, then we'll have a discussion, and then she'll read some more and then she'll answer questions. Her book is full of yellow post-it notes and she needs to use reading glasses. But before she starts to read she says she's been asked about which train the M Train is...Tokyo, Brooklyn,.... She says it's the Mind Train.....she just wanted to see where the writing and memories would take her.

   Patti begins to read. She reads from the chapters that take place in Cafe Ino, her local NYC neighborhood cafe where she writes daily and the Arcade Bar in Detroit where she and her husband spent hours before they were "noticed" by the world. The singular and strong thread that runs through her writing in the Cafe is captivating. The longing and belonging concert of she and her husband in the bar is heartbreaking. Having read Just Kids (Mapplethorpe and her infancy in art days) and being intimately familiar with them (yes, especially the Sam Shepard/Cowboy Mouth days), this revealing of her present life in NY and her past life with Fred Sonic Smith is a revelation to me. She was extremely private and protective of their marriage, except for the glimpses of their "one mind", as she put it last night, in songs. Her ranting and riffing between chapters is something I was familiar with from seeing her interviewed before. She is very alive and connected...which has earned her the title of  "shaman" in some circles. Patti remained unfazed when a mouse started scurrying through the audience and bringing people screaming to their feet. She made a joke about being allergic to mice and added, "I'm from New York. There was a dead rat on my stoop the other day that was bigger than Cairo (her Abyssinian cat, name for the color of the pyramids), "Get over it!"

    When it came the questions from the audience it was painful. One of the first young women asked her if she used a stylist?! She said emphatically "No, in fact I've been kicked out of a few photo shoots for not using one." I don't want to misquote her, but basically she said her style needed no improvement...it was already perfected. Another young woman (and the two questioning lines were exclusively young people (20-30 somethings), told Patti she was an English teacher and headed a Punk Rock band and she asked Patti about how she got respect and how far she thinks things have come for women. The phrasing of the question was oddly entitled and Patti read her the riot act. "When I started out they told me to "get back in the kitchen", and I said, "Fuck You." She went onto say that there are many bigger social injustices these days (and cited gun violence and human rights), that need to be addressed. That it's good to "fight the good fight", but one must fight! The woman beside me said, "Ouch!".

  The tenor of the questions shifted after that to those of identity and art, again, young people searching. Many questions about crossroads, choosing mediums, and conflicts of life paths. When asked point blank how she identified herself, Patti answered, "As a writer," but then she qualified it in a way that was almost exactly the way Annie Leibovitz answered it during a Q&A with her book Pilgrimages: "When I was 8 years old I read Little Women and I wanted to be Jo." Louisa May Alcott, Patti Smith and Annie Leibovitz.....all iconoclastic mavericks. (I was called those two words the first months I moved to NYC in the 80's and had to look them up...but that's another story). Now to hear the Queen of Poetry Rock (as I call her) say she wanted to be Jo March made perfect sense to me. I had a similar reaction when I read the book, at a much later age than 8.

  What's interesting to about both Leibovitz and Smith is that they both started to produce pilgrimages of the private lives after their spouses died. For Leibovitz it was Susan Sontag. For Smith it was both Mapplethorpe and Fred Sonic Smith. Both from a sense of responsibility to their subjects and themselves, and although Patti didn't mention it (but Annie, did),  to their children.

  Over the course of the remaining questions, she never went back to reading chapters, but did point to book cover placard and said the title several times, in the voice of a late night tv ad salesperson. However she did spit (usual), burb (a first for me), swear (usual), and bring down the house with laughter (her weapon of wit)!

   The grand finale was her singing the song Because The Night that she and her "boyfriend", as she still prefers to refer to Fred, wrote http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pattismith/becausethenight.html. She started and the crowd joined in. Her distinct voice, and tone were so wonderful to hear without any accompaniment.....magic moment. Plus her stamping and clapping, overcomes.

  Half the audience took pre-signed books and the other half (my people) didn't. Now was the time to wait on line, replete with stanchions and retractable canvas lines --ala LAX, for the chance to look her in the eye (a difficult feat, since they don't align) and have her sign your book (sans photos, personalization or memoriblia). I was lucky to be near the front of the serpentine line (easily 400 people) and doing anything nefarious (some men, yes they thought the rules didn't apply to them where shamelessly taking photos of her with large (multi lens) and small (phone) cameras -- they were summarily taken to task). When I rounded the bend, proved there was nothing in my book but its contents (pun intended) I was allowed to approach Patti. As I neared, I spoke up:

" Hi Patti. Last time I saw you was in SF to sign work of your collected poems to my daughter Lenora. She's now 17, getting ready for college and considers it an heirloom."

Patti looked up from signing my book, "Bless you and bless your daughter."

"And also you....", I said.

She smiled in return.

Now if I'd been in line for question to her there would have been two: What was it like to meet and perform for Pope Francis and will she ever write about her Mother's support of her as a young artist?

I can imagine the answers, but I'd love to know them for real.

Off to visit Mass MoCa and look at colleges with my kids....

Jolicoeur = Cheerful Heart

  Tonight I watched The Age of Adeline a film about a woman who in a reversal of Shelley's Frankenstein, is not brought to life, but rather put into arrested physical development by a stroke of water and electricity; being stuck at a perpetual 29yrs old for six decades. The premise being that most people entertain the idea of being young forever or living forever, but the protagonist says early on that "never growing old with someone you love creates heartache."  In the end, she gets her wish, I won't explain how, but it's an endearing modern fairytale, to live a life with one person and all that entails, a very old fashioned romantic ideal. Most narratives now are spent considering what it would be like to live many life times and preferably forever.

  At the end, I noticed an odd coincidence, it was co-written by Salvador Paskowitz. http://creativescreenwriting.com/i-dont-think-anyone-works-harder-than-writers-salvador-paskowitz/ You see, Sal was once my brother-in-law. His sister was married to my brother. We have a common nephew. He is a part of a surfing dynasty that was the subject of a film called Surfwise. Now the coincidence is this: I've been wanting to watch this film since I first saw the trailer. I'm a sucker for time-travel-romances. I'm still waiting for my cosmic soulmate to bump into me at some fateful bend in time. And I've been thinking a great deal about a surfing and running friend of mine, Nanette, for a week now....

  Last time I saw Sal was in Honolulu on Waikiki Beach...The Home of The Duke; the father of international surfing, whose birthday was honored yesterday with a Google Doodle. And I hadn't been back there until two months ago when I took this picture.

   For a week now, I've been thinking about two things : That one of my dearest friends, a chosen sister, (Nanette) was losing her Dad to Cancer and that it took a quarter century for me  to beat Bob Jolicoeur in a road race. They are one and the same man.

  When I first met Nan's father, Bob, he was living in luxurious modern Maine house in the tony neighborhood of Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth.  I was 20 years old and just starting college work at USM. Bob was a big-wig in Portland Banking. He and his wife Pris were exceedingly warm and nice to me the first time I met them at their home. Nan and I would later become roommates in a third floor flat in Portland on Frederick Street with the highway, train tracks and a Denny's as our neighbors.

   Bob was a runner. He started running at 35 and had been running a decade when I met him. Nan and I would try to keep up with him throughout our college years to no avail. During those years, the Bank folded out from under him. Instead of being proud and entitled as a middle-aged former banking executive he did something that really impressed me: he took a job in a laundry mat, while he developed new business opportunities.

  Nan moved to Higgins Beach during college, with her then boyfriend, now husband, Craig. There would be many a surfing, running, biking and clambake birthday party on the beach or in their old farmhouse before it burned down. Bob and Pris were often in attendance.

  When Craig, turned 50 we all attended a party at the Boy Scout Camp just down the road from the beach. Bob and Pris were there, dancing, singing and laughing. They were enjoying the grandkids, multi-generational friends and celebrating with their son-in-law.

  Over time, Bob and Pris would run two businesses: she a interior design company and he would do peoples taxes. They'd also become "snow birds", following the sun and sea; Florida in the cold months and Maine in the warm ones. Running year round in short weather!


  Nan and I would enter races with Bob. Nan, of course, entered numerous races with him over the decades.  He'd run 56 marathons in his career. Nan has run at least one and I've run none. Never been tempted; don't know why. I can run Half's very comfortably and that is where I'd like to keep it. But Bob was driven. Racing himself and helping others to enter the world of running. I know I've run several Beach to Beacon's (10K Joan Benoit's race) and at least one Half Marathon in the last decade with him.

  Which is when I finally, after 25 years of trying, beat his time in a race. And yes, he was 25 years my senior!!! He inspired me to push myself for my own PR, but also to catch a taste of what it felt like to run at his pace. He was modest and generous with other runners, which endeared him to us all. He was often the person you'd see the days leading up to races that was volunteering at the tables with bibs and t-shirts and such.

  He was always near the water; in Maine and Florida. Two Lights when I first met him, Higgin's Beach briefly during the years Nan and I were having our children, and going south in the Winter. And for most of the last decade they lived at Old Orchard Beach. Bob had retired, but was still driven to produce so he started a new business at age 74...

At Nan's 50th Birthday, Bob and Pris and Nan's in-laws surprised her with a party. A bunch of us had taken her skating at an outdoor rink in Falmouth, as she "didn't want to fuss and doing anything". But we insisted that we all go back to Carol's (her mother-in-laws) for a warm-up, as she lived in Falmouth, too. Bob and Pris had bought lots of Mardi Gras party favors (as Nan's birthday is mid-February) and turned it into a "not-turning-50-Mardi-Gras-party"! That was 4 years ago, in the picture above, with Nan in the foreground and Bob over her left shoulder....

  Two years ago Bob was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructed Pulmonary Disease. He took two pills a day to combat it...

  Three weeks ago, Bob started to not feel well. Within a week he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. The next week his stomach was filled with fluid, then came the walker and the those amazing blue eyes (as if the sea took residence in them) became jaundiced. By the middle of last week he needed a walker. Thursday they'd decided that he'd been healthy enough prior to the diagnosis to attempt chemo treatments on Monday. Friday they treated the fluid in his stomach.

  I'd been texting and talking to Nan all week. I drove to Maine Friday and stayed 'til Sunday. Saturday I met Nan face-to-face. She reported that Bob was breathing heavily and not eating....our inspiration was fighting a race he wouldn't win. Nan, Pris and Celeste (Nan's sister)  courageously took up the baton and opted for hospice at home. They stayed with him and were joined by Danny, Nan's brother, over the next 48 hours. Bob died surrounded by family yesterday at 5:40PM.

  Bob never spent a night of his life in the hospital. He spent his life with his family by the sea.
Yesterday was Duke's, the father of international surfing, birthday. Yesterday was Bob's death day, the father of a year-round surfer and my favorite running partner in Maine; Nanette. Mahalo, Bob for your dear daughter, my chosen sister, and your inspiration to both of us over the decades.

Summer time and making a living is uneasy....

  Just got off the phone with one of my co-teachers. You see we start work a week from today. Yup, 24th of August in a cement building built in 1961, and I teach on the second floor. Today and tomorrow the temperatures will reach in the mid-90's. It is forecasted to reach as low as the mid-80's by next week. My friend is dreading going back to school, and it's not just from the potential heat-stroke we've all experienced in the building numerous times over the years, but it's the mounting mandates and lack of administrative support that really has teachers hot under the collar.

  You see there is a National Teacher Shortage right now. Do you wonder why? I don't! To be a High School Subject Matter teacher in the State of Massachusetts, one must have not one, but two Master Degrees; one in your Subject area and one in Education. I think it's even more difficult for the elementary teachers, in terms of licensure, but I'm not sure of that. From the time you pass the MTEL (state licensure testing evaluation) for your first license, you have 5 years to receive both Masters and have worked in and received stellar reviews and Professional status in one school district.

  This is getting increasingly tough to do, as the review process and the common core mandates piled on these new teachers (as well as those with Prof. status ~ tenure is a term no longer used to mean safe ~ all teachers are evaluated regularly now, it's just the frequency that changes) makes the stress levels high. So forget about having to pay back college loans while getting two masters and then being required to take additional graduate level courses in both your Subject Area and Secondary Education forever, paying for them out of pocket, and not having that be a pinching reality. You also have to jump through an every increasing number of digital data hoops that you have to design yourself, implement, analyze, graph and file for review as proof of your good teaching practices and how your students are empirically benefitting by them.

  Most teachers do NOT have the summers off. They teach summer school, take graduate courses, ramp up their second or third jobs as tutors, landscapers, coaches, writers, or all of those in some combination. Their windows of time not working can be two weeks really "off" in the summer or not being "off" at all. I'm lucky in that I can manage, with careful budgeting to truly take the time off. But I still lead a HS trip Down Under, finished a Grad Class and took a week long writers workshop (which equals 5 weeks out of my 8 spent "on", not off). Now I'm lucky that I love traveling(which pays for the teacher to lead), teenagers (my own and students), writing (course work and my own) and thinking (about all of the above). Most teachers do not have this luxury and almost all take at least one course during the summer for continued Professional Development credits and to stay current (again, out of pocket).

  I know of no other profession where all of the above is true. Also where it's true and the professional  is often unsupported in the district where they teach. So much so that nationally 3 out of 5 new teachers quit the profession before they reach Professional status (3-5 yrs). Many older teachers are retiring early, as they can't take the continuously changing challenge of meeting new mandates and being responsible for data that we don't have the real resources to complete successfully. The stress for the young and old is mounting.

  I'm in the middle as a career-changer who joined the teaching world in my 40's. The 20 somethings and 60 somethings are bailing at an alarming rate. Now the mid-career folks are shifting districts, thinking that with more resources or a better managed district the classroom will be more in their command. But there really is no geographical solution (although resources and great management help). Just like Medicine, Publishing, or any other profession where the life of the mind meets human interaction, the one size fits all, bottom line and data driven models are running rampant. We're losing the experienced and knowledgable teachers, doctors, nurses, editors, agents and artists who don't want to work for conglomerates or the political ~ philosophical paradigm of the year.

  That's the other side of this frantically fast and ever moving policy shifts; nothing ever stays in place long enough to really see how any of it works or doesn't and why! Each new politician, Superintendent, CEO, Board of Directors, wants to put their own signature on the process, without ever asking or listening to  how they may be repeating past mistakes or not taking into account the reality of so many hours in a work day (although all professional people bring home work now-- no teacher ever leaves all their work in the classroom or employee all their work in the office...not if you want to stay up to date and relevant )! So people are working longer hours, for less money (inflation has not kept up with the cost of living, Doctors insurance rates are ridiculous, Cities/towns aren't always voting to give monies to their school districts ==fire & police, probably, teachers not likely) and feeling less useful as a result.

  We are currently without a contract in the district where I teach. There was talk last Spring of a Work to Rule decision, if we should come into this Fall with no movement forward. I've heard nothing and school starts in a week. Our 3% annual raises of 10 years ago were reduced to 1% and now they have flatlined. Yet we're expected to do all of what I've stated above...Graduate class expense have gone up more than 1-3% in the last decade, so has gas, school supplies (don't get me started) and so on.

  My co-worker is usually an easy-peasy kind of person. But this last year, without a Principal, and no leadership, forget about support, the spirit in the building was crushed. I'd hoped the summer would allow my colleagues to regroup, refresh and come back nourished with the time and distance we need to charge our batteries (teachers make more decisions in one day than doctors do). But instead my pal is worse, as several colleagues have left (early retirement or resigned) and others still wish to leave. The idealism of "changing lives" and "making a difference" has been left in the wake of impractical schedules (we're supposed to have 3 preps, but with limited resources and large classes it can really be 4-5) and seemingly arbitrary solutions that won't really benefit the student.

  So I told this person that I'll try to make them laugh, I'll keep doing the best in my classroom no matter what is happening in the administrative avenues, and that no matter how hot it gets in my room (100+ one year on a thermometer), I'll keep things chill! Good thing I took that writing and meditation workshop this summer!!!

Birds of a Feather stick ToGetHer

  Yesterday I did a meditative weeding walk around my front yard. I'd started by mowing the back lawn, then coming to the front to return the mower to the garage and noticed all the weeds between the bricks on stairway to the front door and thought, I should make that look more welcoming.

  I commenced to weed the bricks and hard brush off the accumulated sand and salt that had been sitting since the spring thaw. Then I noticed the ivy that was overrunning the edges of the walkway and started to creep up behind the house shingles. I trimmed along the stairs, walkway and up the concrete foundation until just below where it met the house frame. The whole time I wasn't thinking very much. I was simply receiving what ever was before me. Weeds, vines, salt and sand. Just moving and meditating like a monk in a pebble garden with a rake.

  After I'd cleared all the debris I created, I turned my eyes to the flower beds. Weeds and deadheads everywhere. Found a pair of sharp scissors and deadhead all that needed it. The butterfly bush especially, which was alternately covered in bumble bees, butterflies ( more kinds than I can name) and humming bird moths (two varieties this year). The fragrance of the flowers put me into a deeper level of non-thinking and just being. When I finished the house side of the driveway, I crossed over to the far bed of flowers that abuts the full length of the driveway.

  It was covered with the pine needles from the giants that stand above it and some of their fallen branches from the windstorm two weeks ago. The weeds were minimal, I guess they don't like pine pitch. So I started to collected the other fallen branches and twigs in the yard between the bed and the woods.

  Halfway down the hill I found the first feather - a long striped blue jay tail feather. I stood up and looked around and thought one word: blue. I then noticed two more small blue jay flight feathers several yards away, toward the sidewalk. I stood up again and thought: blue. Over the course of the next 15 minutes and perhaps covering a 15'x25' piece of land, I had collected 37 feathers. They weren't all obvious. The rain, needles, mud, dust, mulch and so on had darkened and hidden them. But they were all there for the finding.

  Why, you might ask, did I collect all these feathers? Why do some people collect beach glass or heart-shaped rocks from distance shores? We just do. I've collected natural objects as totems since I was a kid. I know many native cultures assign memories to objects, the Hawaiians to shells to remember various rights of passage.

  The blue jay feather, however, took on a new significance for me the weekend I decided to divorce my wasband three years ago. For six months I'd tried to be intimate with him: emotionally, physically, spiritually, intellectually and sexually. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. When for the 7th time in as many months, I asked are we ever going to be intimate again, instead of his stock answer, "of course", he finally spoke the truth, "I don't now." I knew that was as much of a reality as he could bare witness to at the time. When I said I wanted a divorce, in the next breath he asked if we could "have an open marriage." I now realize he'd been telling himself that was what he already was living. I was not.

  In that instant, I knew my marriage was over. We'd been talking in sunroom and the dog had been growing impatient for a walk. I turned to the wasband and said, "tomorrow you're going on the dog walk with me and we'll talk this out." At that moment I went on the dog walk alone. I remember the light filtering through the trees and knowing deep in my bones as I asked the question, "when do you know your marriage is over", that it was NOW. I wasn't shaking. I was at peace.

  The next day we did go for the two mile dog walk I do every Sunday. The last time he'd accompanied me was on Mother's Day when the whole family came as one and we found lady slippers blooming all over the top of Great Hill. But this day was temperate, windless and clear. After not being able to get him to speak to me about anything meaningful for over a year, and only having necessary parental conversations, he was spewing at the mouth. These are the words I remember: Lone Wolf, Not Domestic, Urban, Loner, Not Worthy, Life is Short, After My Father's Death, Not Built for This.....

  As we walked along the trail I'd found three perfectly formed blue jay tail feathers. He was not done with his torrent of tidy tacking points, so we proceeded to walk the trail again. About a third of the way round, I found a fourth blue jay feather. A flight feather that should have been longer than the other three I was holding, but it'd broken in the middle and was bent, damaged.

  He saw me pick it up. He knew how I was about signs and symbols coming from nature and my dreams. He knew it was the fourth feather. He knew it was broken. He knew it didn't belong with the rest, even though I would usually says something like "birds of a feather stick together" around now. So he said, "Don't make too much of that." It was too late. I already had and the feathers message would later prove to be true....which is why he protested too much.

  So finding the collection of flight and tail feathers from a blue jay yesterday was a reminder of how much has changed since three summers ago. I'm much more at peace. I've weeded out the bits that didn't allow my children to grow strong and fearless. I'm getting ready to start entertaining again, and now my walkway is welcoming once more!

TV or Not to TV, that is the question!

  Tonight I watched TV for the first time in two weeks. I did it as a social act to discuss the show, as it was happening, with my daughter. It's a design show where people are tasked with creating a different fashion each week, and at the end of each week some one is voted out of the studio. The modern day equivalent to the gladiators or court jesters, only with a capitalist ~ entrepreneurial twist; when the last designer is standing there is a large some of money and machinery to launch their own business.

  The episode tonight was at least very creative, where the task at hand involved not using fabric but rather Hallmark Cards. The looks created went from hoodie to wedding gown. What I find fascinating is that people watch people who are actually creating something ~ a wearable product ~ over the course of an hour (or in tonights case 90 minutes).

  I wonder how that would work for screenwriting? Give fourteen young and talented, some what proven, screenwriters weekly prompts and see who comes up with the best script? Maybe they could make it interactive and have the audience send in the prompts and be involved, in realtime, with the edits? Sounds like fascinating viewing, right? No? Well it could be, with reality-show backstories, side stories and in-the-moment voice overs while there are writing in a cubicle or cafe by themselves. Or they could have to write in groups, like a weekly variety show, and start off with the Comedians, Dramatist, Memoirists, How-To-Folks and PopCultureVultures! Slowly the teams would be whittled down to one member from each "tribe" and there'd be a new genre write-off : A Tragedy!

  Or a political speechwriter show.....not just West Wing or Newsroom Sorkin stuff, but real from the trenches, three campaigns ago writers (a certain Republican and Democrat husband and wife team come to mind). Would the youth of today stand for such  construct? They could if it had a live Twitter and Instagram feed to the show and uploads of phone video clips for the man-on-the-street eye-witness?! Imagine if the citizens actually created the news?

  Which leads me back to the original thought...while I've NOT been watching TV, I've gone back to my habits of writing and reading. Two that have served me well over the long haul. I think TV for me as a kid was a self-soothing tool, and I know during various parts of my adult life, it has been, too. Where some folks might have a beer or a glass of wine, I might watch what I call "Bad TV" of the bus-accident variety. You know it's awful, you know you shouldn't look, but you do and can't stop.

  Now I've been remembering, as I've been writing a great deal about it, the years on the boat where I didn't have TV and then we sailed to St. Croix and all the films there were several years behind the Main Land, so I basically didn't rely on passive consumption of entertainment for a solid year. That feeling of trusting your inner voice and creative juices starts to rise up when you're not plugged in.

  I know it's very typical during a vacation season for people to want to take "information vacations" as well. I certainly do it during most school holidays and longer breaks. But there is the Pop-Culture-Vulture gene, Science geek and Politically Curious impulse that get the best of me, so I'll turn on the radio to hear what I've been missing, usually in my car, but sometimes at home. If one is not tapped into the every growing "global consciousness", which is becoming more and more interwoven each minute, then there is the real chance you might miss a political seismic shift or subtle change that sets a chain of dominos in a new direction. I've always had great antenna for those trends, but the fractured nature, combined with the fast pace of change, has made it harder to track the pulse of prominent new tracks.

  So people go to the fear or desire (the old Orwell vs Huxley view of American Capitalism played out in Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death) which also drives everything for sale in America. So I guess I'm going to go back to boycotting TV for a while, maybe another two weeks, and see how I feel (I'll let you know here). Right now I find more satisfaction with engaging in my life in the NOW than passively letting canned programming bounce in my direction. I'm more into creating and being than consuming and bowing down to the few companies that control most of the media.

  Goodnight, perhaps I'll be able to catch the Perseid Showers later tonight, if the light pollution isn't too high and the clouds aren't too low, Goodnight!

Walden & Hard Work

  I've been swimming in Walden Pond since I was a girl. I've heard tales of fresh water jelly fish in Thoreau's Cove, swum with the giant many colored carp, been warned about the snapping turtle in Ice Fort Cove and love watching the fish families soar through the underwater cairns that mark the shoals along the edges. At the corner of Thoreau's Cove (where you see the 50 on the chart), there is usually a sign posted with the water temperature. 

  In recent years there has been a great kerfuffle regarding the right of swimmers to continue open water swimming through this deep pond. Mostly it's had to do with one tragic accident and lots of folks with no common sense. A man had a heart attack and died a few years ago. The pond is listed as between 97 and 103 feet deep. Finding drowned swimmers or ice fishermen can be a costly and risky proposition.  It requires divers who are used to cold (spring fed), deep and dark water. Plus they have to close down the park and deal with the liabilities. So for several years the option of closing it to open water swimmers was being poised and finally they came up with a list of rules and requirements that are just common sense (that is why you see many more people who are learning to swim distances doing so with float buoys in the pond). 

  But it's a magical pond...like I mentioned there have been recorded blooms of fresh water jellies! And there are the giant carp that live in Thoreau's Cove and you can even see them swimming slowly under the ice before a first snow makes it too cloudy to see them. It has the remarkable range of temperatures for one pond. The shallow edges and the very deep centers make the variables extreme. As you can see from the top graph, most swimmers not only go around the perimeter, but also criss-cross for more measured distances, many through the deepest part of the pond, thus the coldest. On a day like today, with hot sunshine coming down on your shoulders, many swimmers stuck to slicing at angles vs circling the edges. 

  In winter it's also other worldly. The ice fishermen come out after a long solid freeze and usually some snow. But I remember a winter as a teenager where it froze solid, but there had been no snow. Four of us took two sheets and skates to the pond. The wind usually blows from the West (coming over the train tracks just above the pond). We skated across, unfurled the sheets and sailed back to the beach. This was repeated until we were dog tired! One of my treasured childhood memories of Walden!

  Now I love to spend a lazy afternoon swimming around the pond while my son or friends kayak around exploring different coves. Or just sitting and talking while listening to the languages of the world walk by...people who have read Thoreau's Walden translated into their language (most recent translation I'm aware of: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/america-and-iran-at-walden-pond/398579/ (article ) http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/iran-thoreau-walden-pond/399263/ (Video). 

  I believe that Thoreau was right about many things....nature, simplicity, self reliance, imagination, peace, transcendentalism and much more. But today while swimming close to 2Ms around the pond, catching snatches of peoples conversations at odd head-popping moments, trying to avoid other swimmers or kayakers heading on my course, I was also doing some green-black water  swimming mediation. A carry over from last week's lesson from Dani Shapiro with the ' woods walking mediation'. I love swimming, writing, meditating, being out in nature and working towards goals in baby-steps. And the voice and words  that came to me as I watched waves of light cut through  the water around me were not those of the early North American writers, but rather a mid-century, South American soccer star:

Good night, swimmers, dreamers and hard workers, good night! 

Party of One

  With less than two weeks left before school resumes, I feel the window of a work-free schedule (post traveling w/teenagers, workshops and grad classes) coming to an end. It also signifies an end to possible easy-breezy date nights, assuming I could find a date. That seems to not be an easy thing to do for me.

  Some say, "You must make time for dating", and "You have to work at dating" and all these other euphemisms for to be a 53 yr old woman it's another job to find a truly available man!  You see, I was also struck tonight by the fact that 5 other colleagues, who have divorced just prior to me or after me, are all now married (3), engaged (1) or in a multi-year monogamous relationship (1). Two of the marrieds are men (one in his 50's, one in his 40's). The other, female, is in her 30's. The engagement and long-term folks are on solid relational ground. And me....untethered and unable to find a flow into  which I can hurl myself to find a date.

   Been on and off Match for 2 years now. Don't approach it like a job, but rather a magic window or portal I keep hoping will produce some male counterpart to which I can relate and maybe even date. Nope. I really think theres an art to navigating the algorithms that make Match work, and I've failed to access the secret formula. Likewise POF, Greensingles and so on.

  Since this writing retreat last week, where I met many people I could easily relate to, like I used to in Publishing, I thought, "ah - my people"! Perhaps I need to find a top-notch writers group not only for the ability to process my memoir into something worthwhile, but to perhaps meet someone or be directed toward some one of a similar age, stage and sensibility that may be conducive to getting a date.

  Then other times I think, my life is too full. Teaching full-time (so far 125 students and the numbers just go up in Sept), single mother to a Freshmen and a Senior, English teacher (take home mountains of papers), and some one who likes to have at least a minute to herself and maybe a friend. I know other single mothers who have there kids 50/50 or full-time (my arrangement is like 90/10), and they some how manage to maneuver dates. But I think that they are A) younger and B) more invested in finding someone. I hate that "invested" is the word that comes to mind, but it rings true in this capitalist society. The dating sites cost money and if they don't, they are more likely to be "hook-up" sites, for which that ship has sailed (in the early 80's, thank you very much). People spend their time working at getting a mate.

  Invested in that they hate being alone. I don't. I like it. At this very late age I'm fully realizing how much of an ambivert I am. Yes, ambidextrous and ambivert (too bad I'm not bisexual, as them many more options would be on the table). I crave time to be alone. It's required in my genetic make-up in order to recharge my batteries. I also love to be in herds of people. Classes, races, concerts, protests, marches and so on. I'm fairly good at one on one, too.  I can get in the zone and flow. But I'm no good at the small talk for small talks sake, too artificial. I can talk to anyone, anywhere (as my children and family will attest, but it has to be real to the moment, not small talk).  I like to share stories and histories, and ideally build a history with some one.

  Which leads me to the idea of hurling enough of yourself out there to engage/hook a potential date/fish, but not so much that your entire origin story is left flapping in the breeze. After two years, I've found myself cutting things down to the bare bones and if I'm interested, I reveal a bit more. Problem becomes that I've been told that I'm "intimidating". Break it down people. Not timid. Not dating. Men have used that push back word on me for decades. I'm tired of it.

  Does that mean that I don't need a man, but want one. Not just any man, but one who will hold his own intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically and truthfully? Is that so intimidating?

  That I have stories to tell and places I've been and things I want to do.  Hopefully a man will not be intimidated, but rather intrigued and maybe want to build a new story that we can share together?!

  A part of what makes up my strength is my loyalty and fearless nature. So wouldn't some one want to partner with that? Instead of finding it intimidating a potential suitor might look at me as good investment, since the only thing certain in life is change.

  Part of what I'm writing about in my memoir is just that. That a great deal of what makes a successful life is quite simple: show up and be prepared. If you do those two things, then taking a leap of faith that you can learn something new, go somewhere new or start a new relationship seems manageable.

  Yet now we're back where we started. I show up. I'm prepared (went to a shrink to get all the anger at the wasband out 2 years ago, as I knew no man would stand a chance with me until I exorcised it). Yet it's like being in a whole new world, since I was last dating. There is no there there, it's all virtual. There men saying they want the reciprocal of what I say I want and am (and I don't lie about my age, weight, height and I use recent pix), yet what they really want is some one a decade younger than we both are now. I find myself realizing, over and over, that it will probably be a widower, who I meet - somehow-, during that window of time when their grief has past and another woman hasn't hooked them already.

  Well that is the end of my pity-party for one. Next time you have a dinner party with a single man who you think might find me intriguing, invite us both,  and I'll bring a cake for dessert!

The Tornado and the Twin Oak...

  There is a two mile trail that I walk most Sundays on Great Hill . Usually I bring my dog, Cora, and my neighbor's dog, Bingley (yes, named after the character). This Sunday, yesterday, was different than most. First, we hadn't done this walk in almost a month, as the summer season of traveling has scattered us. Secondly the landscape had subtly and profoundly shifted.

  While I'd been away, my home landline had received 12 messages. Two were from the Town of Acton, in rather rapid succession, according to the time stamp. The first was announcing a Tornado Warning and all that entailed. The second was to announce, that although there were trees and lines down, and many were without power, that the Special Town Meeting was going to be held regardless.

  Now Saturday, when I took the same two dogs for a walk in my local woods, The Acton Arboretum, I'd noticed many downed pine branches, young thin barked trees and quite a few thick barked elders fallen. But nothing prepared me for the placement of the how the trees fell at Great Hill.

  It's not that there were more trees down than any other storm, as this winter quite a few giants fell. Nor was it the numbers of limbs left suspended above the trail that had yet to fully drop. But it was the fact that one twin oak had been split in two. Right down the middle, with the two trunks falling away from each other and where their canopy had been, there was now light, bright like in a usually mushroom laden grove.

  I kept looking at the newly lit grove and couldn't figure out what my eyes were seeing that they hadn't noticed before and then it struck me: a lone birch tree. I spun around in a full circle and realized there was not a partner or relative birch anywhere within at least of quarter mile of this elegant black and white figure. The dogs kept circling back to me, as if to ask, what did they miss?  They often smell the fox before I do (it's smells like skunk), but this time it was the singularity of this lone tree which for nearly a decade I'd never noticed that just stopped me in my tracks.

  So what started off as a routine Sunday walk with the woofs took on the largess in how storms may bring chaos, but they can also shed light on unseen treasures. We also found two woodpecker and one bluejay feather, as an added cherry on top!

  Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to the pool I go!

AMY: Take Two

  Woke up still thinking about the AMY documentary.

  ~ In the early bit when her managers says that Amy has a knack for making you feel like the most important person and then like nothing and then important again ~ that is what people do who feel that way about themselves.

  ~ When she said she didn't know she was depressed, she just knew she was different. Writing helped her deal with the difference and music brought people to her, but she didn't learn how to bridge to them.

  ~ Telling her mother that she had a great diet; eating what ever she wanted and bringing it up in the loo. Again the behavior of some one who listens to what their body desires, consumes it and then denies the body the nourishment.

  ~ Her ideal of being in her own apartment to be able to "smoke week and write songs all day." One is honoring soul and the other is hiding it.

  ~ Self sabotage as a way of living is bound to put you at the bottom and ultimately dead.

  ~ Being told "No" is something she was telling her parents she needed and asking for them to tell her (even when she was an "independent" young adult), but nobody listened, except her bodyguard near the end when it was too late as the patterns of behavior we set in replay mode.

  ****************************************************************************
   Drinking as the drug of choice is telling. It, like most drugs, is a depressant. It does damage to your body and mind that takes years to heal and may never be recovered. It makes you feel more in control of your choices than you actually are and your head can't hear your gut ~ your soul is silenced.

  I quit drinking 30 years ago last month. It may sound odd, when you do the math, to say that I quit drinking at 23, in fact the day I turned 23. But it was very intentional and I've not broken that vow to myself in 30 years. You see I started drinking, to the best I can recall and have it verified by friends, when I was 12, but it may have been earlier. So by 23, I'd been drinking for over a decade. Right when most kids are getting out of college or coming into their own in a job and having money to afford alcohol on a regular basis, I was done. Like Amy, I felt I manipulated people when I was drunk. I felt I could suggest things and sowed seeds that I knew, deep inside, were destructive to other people I cared about or worse would make them come back to me for negative reasons. That was why I stopped. No one thought of me as "a drunk" or called me manipulative, but I knew it was true. Ironically, it was the year my father started a successful beer business, but that is another story.

  Getting back to the Tony Bennett quote about learning to live life by living long enough, that was another part of the process. When I turned 20 I stopped doing any other drugs or such, and toned down my adrenaline junkie impulses. I still loved to be active outdoors in extreme ways, but didn't want to push that razor-wire envelope, as I wanted to live to be old. My new motto was to "grow old gracefully."

  Food was another source of love and control in my family, so I recognized it in the AMY film. My families relationship to food is complex. We grew up in two households of mostly "health foods" with early ethnic cooking adopters. Plus where ever the parents travelled, they would try to replicate the food at home. We were not the house that had Capt. Crunch or Pop-tarts, more likely homemade yogurt or croquettes. There were large groups of us; often 8 at a table and the fewest at 4. Vats of one-pot meals at my mother's and generous portions of multi-pot cooking at dad's. We all learned how to cook, expect for maybe two brothers. Growing up in the age of Twiggy and TV as the social soother, where everyone was trim, made body image an issue. Plus the lens of our parents being projected onto us, especially the children most like each parent; that is alway the toughest soil to hoe evenly.

  I hid my young female body in fat and vests until I was 17. I can't imagine being in the public eye or on a stage like Amy at that age, let alone progressing to constant paparazzi snapping at your heels. Even in a family where we all talked about everything, collectively and individual, in a compassionate way, several of us have battled body image issues.

  It's not like you can just intentionally stop eating (unless you do of course, which for a while I did, by keep myself on too little food a day in my early 20's). Even during my brief late twenties modeling moment, I ate and just moved more. So you have to come up with a livable contract with yourself on that front. No one in Amy's life really addressed that issue, it seemed in the film, at all. It's not like depression and bulimia weren't known diseases with workable and tested ways  of addressing them. But this is where time being sped up by fame, and not being able to live positively in the now, brought about her downfall. No one helped her slow down...they call it the fast lane because you're constantly looking forward, not repairing the past and never actually living in the moment.

  What gets to me is her father, most of all. Her weak mother, who she told, even as a young girl, that she needed to be firmer with her and her siblings. And her disaster of a father whose only self involvement and doing what served him best at each turn trumped what she needed as a daughter, to the point of death. As a parent, I can't imagine being so self centered. I'm not perfect, but my god, these two were tragic.

  Okay thats my last two bits on AMY: Take Two!

Amy and Tony were sweethearts......

  The siren song of the trailer and the stellar reviews made it impossible for me to not see this documentary in a theater. I've asked gal pals and my kids to accompany me to see it, but I had no takers. So it's Saturday Night and it seemed like a good idea to go now before it left the Metro area and I'd be reduced to Netflix and no cinema sound system.

  Oh, Amy...why'd you have to leave us so soon. The film leaves all the survivors culpable. It makes the viewer wonder if only far too many times. Her depression, family's divorce and desire to be loved by the men in her life (father first, husband second) were only symptoms. She says that she had demons in her head that she could only tame through her writing. I think many, myself included, who suffer from depression and feelings of abandonment write out the pain in order to make sense of it. Yet the writing and music gave her joy and purpose......so what happened?

  What is bizarre to me is how she could take anti-depressants, shift gears with booze and hard drugs and have such an unrelenting relationship with bulimia and not have been hospitalized earlier. It seems that anyone of these medical and self-medicating acts done to extreme for a decade would have hit a wall even earlier. The friends, family and paid help who didn't insist on her taking all the time she needed, repeatedly and consistently must have been ignorant to the full depth and layers of her inner turmoil.

  Yet, there it is, captured on film and in her lyrics....the pain, the longing, the need to be held and cared for in a primal way. The macha girl who intimidates men, so that they can't hurt her and her relationships are razor-wire walks instead of cuddle puddles. Drama obscuring reality, because no one dares look at the mundane and messed up truth of the matter.

  Several men in the film do try to protect her from herself and others, but none succeeded. Tony Bennet laments not taking her aside and supporting her. I wonder if she would have let him? Could he have been a father figure and mentor that she might have risen to meet, and in doing so, see herself in a positive mirror? That is the problem with documentaries like this, the "what ifs" that one can ask, like a Monday Morning Quarterback, but for which there are no real answers.

  I remember meeting Tony Bennett once. I ran into him, literally. It was during a Christmas concert in SF with multiple bands and I had a backstage pass because TMBG was in the line-up. I was walking up a flight of stairs that ended abruptly, having been built only to get on and off of the temporary dressing room platform, and I crashed into TB. He was nonplussed, gave me a hug and said, "Hi, I'm Tony." I told him my name, I asked where my brother might be and he pointed me in the proper direction. This was in the early 90's a part of TB's "come back" era. I thought of it more as a revival of a classic that never should have gone out of style to begin with, but the media was calling it a come back. I just thought, classy guy, my height with a sweet smile. http://www.songkick.com/festivals/529499-live-105-green-christmas-acoustic/id/14130054-live-105-green-christmas-acoustic-1993

  To see him in pain over the loss of Amy, a girl he says in the film stands right up there with Ella and Billie in the Jazz Singer cannon, his words summed up the sentiment of the whole film. She was a genius jazz singer, who was growing into a multi-genre singer and should have lived to be old while growing with any new music that came into being.....just like TB has done. He said; "If you live life long enough, Life shows you how to live".

  Dani Shapiro quoted this line from the film during our retreat this week. It was relevant to our transforming segments from our lives into chapters of our memoirs. But it is also true of an artist who is having trouble transitioning to a new way of being, while still trying to live her one wild and precious life. May Amy's songs and art continue to catch the ears and imaginations of beings riding the planet earth for many years to come.

Good night, all, good night.

Transforming Life into Art

  This isn't the clearest picture, but it captures the sentiment of how we came to feel about each other after five days as student (me) and teacher (Dani Shapiro). It also comes close to capturing the messy nature of life and of the writing life. Dani's original title for this workshop of fiction and memoir was going to be Transforming Chaos into Art, but Liz Lesser (author and co-founder of Omega) thought that might be too dark. 

  Dani's humor, clarity, thoughtfulness, depth of experience with writing and teaching was a gift to all the writers who attended this week. In the last session today, she fielded questions regarding publishing, agents, editor, self-publishing, blogging and so on. It's unusual, I learned this week, that this little blog that gets the dregs of my attention has been viewed by 21,000 people from 21 different countries since January. Dani addressed all these "business" items and more from the list of questions that people had been saving up for the post "craft and cultivation" sessions.

  We had a private talk about cultivating this little blogging habit of mine and of other ways to keep being as productive as I have this week. How to keep going with the memoir writing once I return home to the checklists, chores, children and general routine demands of regular life......and in just over two weeks time, teaching/grading/prepping for 130+- students 5 days a week/nights and weekends! Her suggestions were specific and strategic which is how I like to approach things. Pure intentions, plus hard work.

  One of the definite things I'm going to do is add writing time each day, above and beyond the blogging. I'm going to tag it onto my daily meditation, as follows the seminar routine for how we started our days with Dani (quadrants, meta-meditation, master writing, writing exercise). Easy to keep going at home with the commitment of being in the now and sticking to it. Plus map out deadlines for workshops/applications and such as my stories become unpacked.

  One thing I did not expect from this week was the amount of other writers, with whom I swapped contact info, and may now use as a virtual writing group. While I attempt to find or cultivate a trusted group of writers with whom to work, this could be a invaluable resource. The productivity of these writers, kindness and generosity was an added and suprising gift. I'd hoped for some structure and guidance from Dani, as several writers had recommended her to me as a master teacher/writer. I hadn't expected to find a tribe of like-minded people who may be willing to give as good as they get. Time will tell how real these impulses to continue working together will be, but, ever the Tigger, I'm hopeful.

   Plus one writer, who has a blog with a large audience, wants to link our blogs as she thinks it will benefit  and build our audience....funny how this little piece of digits, x's & o's, is growing, isn't it. So, that too, I'll see if and how it organically grows or not.

  Mostly, as I stated yesterday, it's about getting the stories down, doing drafts and seeing what shape they take. It may be that in the telling I find something else that needs to be said that supersedes the the lesson laden stories I've been planning to share....stories of choices and how we are the choices we make and the stories we tell. How we must always be careful  how we craft the stories of who we are when we carry them with us. How we are not the same people we were when we lived the stories. Time, distance, reflection, remembering (re-member-ing), forgiveness, experience and who we are now shape how we tell our stories. What we leave in, what we leave out. What will be of use and will have intentions that are true.....which is always hard, because life is messy and memory is too.

 A sculpture I passed every morning, near the Ram Dass lotus-shaped library, seemed to me to be a metaphor for memoir. It was a metal outline of a human stuck in the ground, and then a few yards away another only slightly shorter, and so on until you reached the cut-out human at the end. The silhouettes stuck in the ground are like the various selves we all are at various stages of our lives.

 I'm not the same person I was at 23 as I am now at 53, and hopefully won't be the same at 83! Nothing is constant but change and our soul/energy. In each moment we are ourselves, but we're also our choices . So I'm going to write about various points in my life where I made choices that lead to great changes, as that is what my students, friends and children seem to want to know. Transforming my Life into Art.......wish me luck!

Writing: Here and Now

  Each morning, for the last 4 mornings, I've climbed the hill and taken off my sandals on this porch. I've then spent the next three to six hours in the building just to the left of this frame; The Sanctuary.

  I've been looking forward to this week since March and it has not disappointed me. In the last three days I've produced 7 pages of a decent draft of one of the stories I've been meaning to unpack in words for decades. During the exercise drills in the morning sessions and one afternoon session, I've been receiving warm and discerning feedback from my fellow workshop writers. Many of them have published book length works. Some have successful blogs, college courses with waiting lists, agents chomping at their bits for the next installment, and many, like me, are finally daring to give form to the stories people have been asking us to share for years, or we've been needing to share.

  One of the biggest revelations this week is that I part of what I've been missing in my life is writers. Most of my life I've been surrounded by story-tellers and writers. My households when I was a child, my alternative prep school as an adolescent, on the seas with sailors, as a reporter in college, and as a literary agent in publishing. Since entering my latest career over a decade ago, as a High School English teacher, I've turned exclusively to reading books and an occasional writer's seminar or reading to get my fix. It hasn't been the same thing as having daily contact with people who are producing and creating art with words.

  This experiment of writing down my thoughts at the end of each day...from head to fingertips to digital page...worked until I went sailing and shifted to paper pages and got out of the habit. It's bizarre to find how dependent on wi-fi and electricity I've become.

  On the first day of this week-long retreat, the head of the Institute announced that everyone should put away their cellphones and if they had to, only look at them for 5 minutes a day while there were here. She continued by emphasizing that she was mostly addressing the adults, not the teenagers! In true form, I've seen more parents than kids with their phones out, hovering by the cafe where they can access wi-fi and for those of us who are droid dependent, a signal! I've been writing in the cafe most days, as it's been cooler than my cabin, and I will admit to using the wi-fi to fact-check or do a smidgen of research for my work. My phone has been off except for taking pictures or checking to see if my kids have texted me.

  I've also had a break through about needing to find a high level writing group when I return home, so my new adopted habits can be finely honed. Having an editor in NYC who has offered to help down the road is beyond fantastic, but right now I need weekly in the trenches feedback from others who are doing similar work. Dani has been very encouraging, and even invited me to some other smaller retreats in the future. She suggested Ann Hood as a resource for finding a MA writer's group. So in typical, devil may care, I sent her a message (we're fb friends) and she instantly replied that she didn't know any group in my area, but suggested a high level group in Boston that I'll follow up.

  What never ceases to amaze me is that if you put yourself out there and are willing to do the work, the road often rises up to meet you. Or in this case if you're willing to climb the hill and commit to writing, receiving and critiquing with compassion and goodwill others will there to help you on your way.

Omega State of Mind

  This morning during our writer's workshop, we did a new exercise. We continued our morning meditation with a "walking meditation". We used the tunings of our previous mornings and carried them into the trails outside the Sanctuary.

  Dani Shapiro has been deft with giving this large group of writers tools to take home and use to help in the honing of their craft. This was a new one for me. Now I walk in the woods almost every day, and I meditate every day, but I've never done them consciously together. The results were interesting and immediately rewarding.

  I, along with 40 other, people stepped outside, put our shoes back on and went on an intentionally meditative walk for 20 minutes. Being a trail runner and woodland dog walker, I'm pretty accustomed to being aware of the rhythm of my body and the balance of it moving through space. Whether being a blessing or a curse, I tend to see, hear and smell everything I walk near. In so doing, I've see patterns in nature, and with humans, my whole life.

  However, on this walk, retaining the meditative state I'd established in the Sanctuary, it was a heightened experience. I noticed myself moving through space; the light, the air, the crunch of pebbles under my feet and I walked more slowly ("Zombie-like", she suggested before we started the exercise). I walked so slowly at first that I found two flies chasing each other in the shade behind the Sanctuary, zig-zagging from leaf to leaf, while only flying a few inches above the ground. Then I observed an almost dead worm wrapped around some pebbles within the circumference of the leafs and wondered if the flies were planning lunch or a late afternoon snack. My eyes drifted to the ledge face floor and noticed an Indian Pipe plant, which had I been walking at my usual pace, would have been missed. I found humor in it's nickname, corpse plant, as I thought of the worm and the flies.

  Next I decided to ascend the path above the Sanctuary, as I'd seen hiking trails drawn there on the campus map. It was hard to downshift my usual pace on the ascent, especially with gate set with the flagstones built into the hillside. This time it was my ears, not my eyes, that directed me. As I reach the top of the landscaped path, I followed what appeared to be a deer path. I was hearing cicadas and some birds trying to call each other through the din. I kept pausing to see the dappled waves of sunlight hitting the skin on my freckled arms and legs. My face would then turn up towards the sun and I'd listen for the bird calls. I knew the calls, but couldn't remember which birds were attached to them.

  As I reached the ridge, the trail turned into a human one, complete with red circles painted about 6' up the trunks of pine trees every 50' along the trail or so. The cicadas quited and the bird's squawk to my right grew more incessant. I headed down the trail, following my ears while looking down at the path, until a drumming, loud and clear started against a tree to my left made me look up and across the canopy. Ahhhh.....now I knew who they must be! Sure enough that was all the partner to my right needed and it swooped down, flying just 10' in front of me, through the clearing of the human path, and across to a dead tree near it's mate. It began to  drum and drill with it's beak in kind. Reunited the Pileated pair settled down to a happy silence.
http://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/pileated-woodpecker?gclid=CjwKEAjw6IauBRCJ3KPXkNro1BoSJAAhXxpyI5Lk29_odvK12kHE7SYB2CjghCFCzQyKYOL6RbhlUxoCxU7w_wcB

  After our morning session, I had lunch with some other writers, as I've been doing every meal, much to my delight. I then decided to go for a swim down at the lake before starting my afternoon writing session.

  Once at the lake, I stumbled upon another workshop group ~ Singing in the Stream. The teacher for that group has worked with musicians and singers around the world and taught them how to use the body as an instrument in every way (if you know Bobby McFerren's music, you know what I mean be every way, and BM was a student of this teacher). This afternoon, they decided to actually sing in water, so they were at the water's edge of the beach that we all share. It was a different form of meditation to come upon this group practicing and dancing in the water while kids with noodles  jumping off the dock on one side and adults lounging in chairs with books  on the other side, passively absorbed the fruits of their song.

  I actively tuned in. First on the beach, then in the water and finally as I kayaked around the circumference of the lake, as I was down wind the whole time. Today the lake had a new surprise for me; the duck week was in full bloom, both above and below the water. Oh to be a painter today, or to have remembered my phone-camera! Across the lake circular yellow waxen lilies bloomed and in the coves there were white feather lilies unfurling. Yesterday none of the flowers showed themselves ~ and today it's as if the singing summoned them to open!

  So it seems that this place and the work people are doing here is taking hold of my being and I intend to put these new tools in my bag and have the intention of using them daily.

Shots of Awe, Not Shock and Awe!

Roughly 5 years ago a young guy claiming to work on Al Gore's TV network asked me to "friend" him on Facebook. He said he'd been reading my posts, especially when I wrote about "the life of the mind", that we had many digerati friends in common and he'd like to share ideas. I googled him and checked our mutual "friends" list and found him to be interesting, so I clicked "confirm". His name was Jason Silva.

Some of you may know who he  and others will have no clue. http://thisisjasonsilva.com His website will give you an idea, for those of you who don't know. He's doing what he said he wanted to do, elevate discourse to the state of awesome investigations into worlds we've yet to imagine. He's been compared to Timothy Leary, associated with Ray Kurzweil/Al Gore/Fortune 500 companies, hosts National Geographic's "Brain Games", and narrates beat philosophy in his "Shots of Awe" YouTube series. He was born in Venezuela, went to college in Miami and now resides between LA and NYC. He is 20 years my junior and prolific in his ability to flow philosophy to the masses like a master jazz musician. https://www.facebook.com/jasonlsilva/videos/vb.1578052705792342/1579437918987154/?type=2&theater

As his popularity rose, I realized I was shifted from his personal fb page to his professional fb page. No biggie, I am still getting the content of his machinations and sharing in the life of the mind conversation.

Today is Memorial Day. It is a day where we are supposed to honor the soldiers who have sacrificed for our country. Many have given their lives, limbs and peace of mind for our flag and philosophies. A front line journalist who I used to represent, Markos Kounalakis, annually posts a film he made of Mark Twain's "The War Prayer" on this day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVod4PwQHs He directed and produced it, along with some Grade A talent. Twain's Prayer is a harsh indictment of war. It was published 13 years after his death, as his family feared retribution for the ideas laid bare in it. Twain himself told a reporter when is was discovered and he refused to publish it,  "No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead." When you view it, you'll understand why. 

You see, our democracy is supposed to separate church from state. However we all know this is not yet achieved (even a hundred years after Twain's death and beyond our experimental nations bicentennial). I teach too many texts on war compounded with this corrupted philosophy: Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns" & "The Kite Runner", Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front", Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" & "Hamlet", Zola's "Jean Gourdon's Four Days", Helen Keller's "Strike Against War", Kingston's "Warrior Woman"  and the films, "Joyuex Noel" and  "Princess Kai'ulani". 
My high school students, the people who will be both our next voting electorate and a disproportionally large population to enroll in the armed forces, become emotional weary of these texts. They depress and confuse them. The only texts that give them some hope are the Hosseini novels and the Princess Kai'ulani film. 

And that is ironic! The wars in Afghanistan have been raging almost their entire lives (from 2001 to present). Yet, the characters they relate to and feel compassion for are the American annexed Hawaiian Princess, the Russian overrun Afghanistan female and male protagonists and the Scottish/German/French soldiers in the trenches of WW1! Most armies are young and male. The fact that the princess and Afghani girl are held in high esteem by my students is a new shift in the story telling and receiving lens. 

When asked how many students have members of their families or loved ones in the armed forces, the hands of a majority of my students in all 5 periods will rise. When asked how many of those serving or who have served will openly talk or discuss what war is really like with them, usually there will be a hand or two raised. My classes are large, by the way, 20 at the smallest and 30 at the largest. 
When asked why those who are serving joined, these are their answers: Education, 9/11, Family Legacy, Money, Technical Training or some combination thereof. When asked why they have enlisted, and a large number each year do, the answers are the same. None say: Country or Flag or Honor or National Duty.

When we study Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and Martel's "The Life of Pi" they have two very strong reactions. The hate Kafka and love Martel. The angst and symbolism of Kafka is oppressive to them, and it takes a while for them the understand all the historical and philosophical context. What they also don't know, until I point out the method of my madness, is that Martel's tale is just as dark and oppressive, it just has a modern and global sensibility. Both deal with man's search for meaning. Both deal with overcoming loss of control. In each it isn't country vs country or government vs government, it's man vs man. That starts to be hinted at in Remarque's WWI novel, when the protagonist commits treason by giving the enemy food and cigarettes; he sees them as himself. We have long discussions about life being a series of choices at various junctures. We discuss the characters choices and by extension our own. 

At several points during the year I summon my inner Harvard Professor, or rather I borrow liberally from a Harvard Course on Justice taught by Dr. Michael Sandel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY  It is basically a course on choices and morality with the philosophical high stakes of who would you kill and why. The URL above is just the first of many, and it's entitled "The Moral Side of Murder". I'll have you know that once I start to pepper my lessons with these constructs the students beg for them often. The second one is "The Case for Cannibalism". Sounds grim right, but it's a feature of our human animal history that we don't like to discuss or bring to light often. Murder is much more common. So common that we have played homicide games since infancy. We even teach our pets to "play dead". 

Getting back to Church and State. I live in Massachusetts. I was born in Boston. We recently sentenced a man to death for a terrorist act, and I wasn't happy about it. Yet many were.  I was raised by college educated, quasi-hippie, take it to the streets, write to your congress person, question authority people. I will mention that none of my blood relatives have served in a war since the Civil War, and then it was in a divided state: Kentucky. Mark Twain was living the last time any Nazor or Harrison fought in a war. Also none of us have attended church regularly since the '50s.

War has gone from being chess piece matches with platoons of men to systemic disruptions with a handful of men. Church has been slowly removed as first the Industrial and later the Scientific revolutions took hold. Yet America is still the child of England, and even though most anglos moved here for religious freedom, it's taken hundreds of year for us to finally see organized religion waning as an adjective by which we define ourselves. Many of my students, 10 years ago, still clung to their Catholic faith. Now fewer are being confirmed and fewer yet say they will continue to practice once they leave home. Many are starting to write college essays about separating from their faith and making choices based on who they are as individual vs a member of a congregation. This has been a seismic shift in the student body. It's also starting to change the way they think about family legacy and enlisting. They see, first hand, more of the effects of PTSD. 

What the students learn from their families and the texts is that in order to win wars you must dehumanize the enemy. They have also learned that is only temporarily achieved. The energy of those you killed, maimed or crushed follow you home. The artist, like Remarque, tries to give it meaning  or exercise it through writing. The professor tries to make it a moral lesson by imagining it and then taking it apart choice by choice. The psychiatrist does the same thing by talking the soldier through it, day by day, battle by battle. I lived with a Vietnam Vet, Ron Ouellette, for three years on a boat. He would have what we'd call "black spells". He'd been a truck driver who delivered supplies to the front lines in Vietnam. When he returned to the states he was broken, became a vegetarian, and had a vasectomy. He's seen innocent women and children killed and decaying by the side of the road. He said he could never bring a child into a world that could do that to people. He processed it after I left the boat, and while we stayed in close communication. He became an ICU nurse. First in the USVI and then in Florida. He was stable and content, until the vets started coming back from Afghanistan. Their stories were his story. The tapes playing in their head re-activated the stories he'd worked a decade earlier. When he retired a few years ago, he had to deactivate the tapes and has now regained a much deserved and hard won contentment. He started traveling again, this time not by boat, which was his primary mode of transportation since returning from Vietnam, but by car and to National Parks. They say that the state of awe one experiences in viewing the Grand Canyon shuts off all the usual patterns of thinking and jumpstarts you right into that much coveted place called FLOW. I believe that the National Park tour, with his latest lady friend, has been powerful medicine in restoring a sense of inspiration to my friend. He used to manufacture it himself: building two boats, one house, going back to school in his 40's, nursing vets and so on. Now he's receiving it and I'm so happy for him. 

I took the kids to see the latest Mad Max movie on Saturday night. It's a post-apocolyptic tale of hope and redemption. It's a wildly feminist take on the old Mad Max franchise, like they threw in some Margaret Atwood and did hire Eve Ensler (who contributed to the screenplay) http://time.com/3850323/mad-max-fury-road-eve-ensler-feminist/.  Seeds, breastmilk, breeders, male slaves and one female amputee truck driver will give you an idea of the landscape of "Fury Road". Mad Max isn't the protagonist, Furiosa (Charlene Theron ~ she's mad as hell and won't take it anymore) the warrior! I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet, but it shows that the time of the woman, peace, contributors vs authoritarians  and nurturing may actually be gaining root in our consciousness, and it may start to grow in the real world. 

The above is the Peace Prayer by St. Francis of Assisi. I boldly pronounced my crush on the current Pope of the same name to my class of World Studies students last week before we took our field trip to NYC and the 9/11 museum. If you read the last word in each line it goes something like this: 
Peace
Love, 
Pardon,
Faith, 
Hope, 
Light, 
Joy, 
Console,
Understand,
Love,
Pardon,
Life. 

You notice two Pardons. That is what we have to do to move forward as the human race. Pardon our trespassers and ourselves. That is the only way War will ever end and we can enter a time of Peace. 
This will take a great deal of active thinking to achieve. It will take a great deal desire and inspiration. It will take more than knowledge, it will take imagination and determination. We will have to shoot ourselves full of AWE, and not longer commit acts of Shock and Awe! 

This is my prayer for Memorial Day: That the world will learn to live together as one, so war will be impossible, as there will be no "us" and "them". Jason's "Shots of Awe" are a step in the right direction! 

Happy Memorial Day, to young and old, dead and living, G'Day!