Stevie and Joey: A Tale of two kitties

When my old mother cat Camillia, daughter of Emily the original mother cat, gave birth to what would be two of her very last four kittens, I named them "Stevie" and "Joey." One, Stevie, was very sociable and the other, Joey, very independent. At first they were friends and played together as kittens will, but when they turned adolescent their fights became more and more intense. Joey would disappear for days; Stevie took over the yard. Then we had to go to Milwaukee and live with my daughter and son-in-law, which required neutering everybody. Stevie was around, Joey wasn't, so Stevie got neutered and Joey didn't. Joey never did turn up for our departure--he'd been gone for a week when we left for Milwaukee. I thought we would never see him again.

Over the next five months Stevie became an indoor cat. He lived in a house full of other dogs and cats and lost his shyness of strangers and became fully domesticated. When we returned March 30th, the snow still on the ground, there was Joey waiting for us! He had grown into an enormous, muscle-bound tomcat with a big head and a slowly swishing tail and yellow eyes that watched us all from a distance, ready to dart for cover. He must have lived in the empty house's cellar all winter. He looked very healthy and fit. I will not mention details of the ensuing encounters between the two brother cats and former litter-mates, only conclude Stevie became terrified of Joey, who was twice his size, and would go to any extent to avoid him, and Joey would go near nobody but me and Cheena, his dearly beloved and well remembered surrogate mother. Camillia eyed Stevie and Joey equally with the same cool eye of the eminently ordained matriarch and treated them both the same, with tolerant disdain. Cheena loved them both, but especially Joey.

Joey prowls around and lets me feed him now. He comes in through my window in the wee hours of the morning and eats the cat food I have there for him. He appears to be leading a very successful life (one can only imagine)for miles around, for he disappears for days at a time. I do celebrate his life. As for Stevie, he has the house and garden but he is always on the watch for his bigger, more muscly, more natural brother, and is cautious about where he goes at all times.

CHIMNEY-SWEEP

I forgot to tell you the chimney-sweep is coming.
He'll scrape the inside where the stuff accumulates,
And warn us not to burn a fire too slow and cold
When the weather's such and such,
And how every now and then we'd best to let it roar
And burn out chunks of stuff we'd best not have in there.
Let it be hot as hell now and then, he'll repeat
For it's the best thing of all he knows,
How the stuff builds up and ignites when you're least looking,
And there goes your chimney.
I called him up and he's coming over.
I'll let him put back the pipe I've had apart this year.

WELCOME MAT

I

There the limbs are spread to welcome in the light
But I'll not spread my arms for you, or wait
A single extra second for your face
To turn and look for one lost lingering trace
Of love on mine. Instead you'll find there hate
And loathing for a heart so cold and tight
And hard it never once would let me in;
But let my virtue languish into sin
Where courage, faith, forgiveness and their kin
Were locked inside the box beside my bed
To keep as souvenirs until I'm dead
And all the trees with light on them turn red.
You can keep your love, if you call it that,
This endless treading on my welcome mat.

I am a man more sinned against than sinning

"A King is supposed to have all that he needs without having to worry about anything in his late years. Yet King Lear, in Act 3, Scene 2, cried out pitifully: "I am a man / More sinned against than sinning." Although Lear has made a huge mistake in the first scene of the play in dividing up his kingdom and banishing his two dearest people, the sins his two other ungrateful daughters have done him is far greater than the extent of Lear's wrongs."

I don't know who wrote this, but I give full credit to the person on directessays.com who did because they put it well, King Lear's dilemma, which I have often related to my own. I once, or maybe twice, and possibly thrice have felt more sinned against than sinning. It is not the reason I picked this play as the one I love the best, but I do too have daughters, and though it was originally The Fool I identified with in this play (and he disappears in Act Three), there have been times I have identified with many more of the characters--Cordelia, Kent, even Goneril and Regan--especially when my aged, alienated and alienating father came to live with me--even the messengers. A mother is often the messenger.

Anyway, it is Lear himself I seemed to be echoing this morning as I explained to one daughter in reference to another, that there was a time when I too definitely felt "more sinned against than sinning." In my family the Stoic way, swallowing the drama of the emotional traumas that beset us all--see William Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life: the ancient art of stoic joy, rather than "working it through," is often how we deal with disillusionment and hurt, and loss of innocence, rather than picking the scab of painful memory and keeping it current. Yes, surely I too did once feel much more the victim, the one more sinned against than sinning.

What is required of one who would move on, when one has been more sinned against than sinning, is to think of it as being beyond the realm of what one has control of, and not letting it concern you ("God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.") As the author of the above book cited, William Irvine, wrote me recently in a letter exchange, the AAA prayer is basically based on Stoic principles, accepting rather than continually regurgitating the fact that "I have been a man more sinned against than sinning." We are all victims in this life of that which we cannot control, and deciding those things which we cannot control (past, present, future trauma) are simply not of our concern may be our best way of all of viewing them. "Spun of pain and sorrow bought/Death is but an ugly thought" I wrote once in a poem when I was sixteen, trying to deal with the death of my grandmother. So too, perhaps, are the thoughts that we have been more sinned against than sinning--just thoughts that need not be beleaguered.

To commit or not: excerpt from a letter to a friend on inertia

I have found that the time after the struggle of keeping life and limb alive, my own and my children's, has been most difficult. Apparently I have needed that struggle as a context for creativity, and finding it gone has precluded to some extent new creations. So when I hear you say you are getting ready to or are in the process of or have indeed found a way to slough off commitments (as Julia might say), I think of King Lear and who loves me best, and wonder about the nature of commitments. I believe I do have mine still, and that creation itself is needed to feed commitment, and vise versa. I would love to read a new epic with Saladin and King Richard as CEOs by you, and even more find myself writing a new epic about the story of my ancestors--and finish the painting, and finish a half-dozen other projects mouldering about in their neatly filed dusty piles.

Comical considerations: town embezzlers and their punishment

Almost comical it is how every few years, every now and then, some local selectman is found dealing drugs with a known dealer, or some assistant town clerk is found to have embezzled as much money as anyone else might have earned in a lifetime, that being all the money the town had had in its till. The District Attorney is notified and off he or she goes to arrest the culprit; and then he or she, the culprit, goes to court, and presumably is punished somehow.

It is not really known by me what eventually happens to these people. Do they get a large fine (not paid with town takings) and six months in prison? My son once corrected me about describing prison, when it was jail he was talking about--heaven forbid the guilty embezzler has only to go to jail, if jail is all my son holds it up to be, much more pleasant than not, apparently.

Something worse must be provided as punishment for the crime of embezzlement. Maybe there ought to mandated, instead of jail, a counseling process for the depraved one, a group session with other defunct town government officials, all of them local people gone bad who had cheated their own neighbors out of their hard-earned money for their own private gain.

How did that FEEL, Dr, Phil would ask them. How does it make you FEEL to quietly deflect a few dollars here and there from the main town revenue flow into your own bank account?? YOU--an esteemed selectmen, a reputable, retired drug store merchant who has been considered FOR YEARS a leader of the other selectman, involved in local issues, active in solving local problems--??...... meeting with A KNOWN DRUG DEALER in the wee hours of the morning, exchanging what turns out to be town money--money entrusted to you by the VERY CITIZENS who employed and trusted you? What sort of mind were you IN when you let yourself think only of yourself and NOT of the public trust? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??

Dr. Phil would demand to know these things of the ashamed, condemned, and court-assigned support-group attendees slumped in their chairs in a circle in his interactive, televised public forum--a sort of latter day in-stocks situation to say the least. Each condemned person would be forced to reveal his inner thoughts and how now with reborn hope he or she could move on and try to apply some of the skills he or she had learned in the group amongst others of his or her ilk in reforming his or her wearily depraved ways......

And these people in the court-mandated support group--fellow felons and/or civil criminals arrayed in a circle and made to equally to confess the thoughts, and more importantly, the feelings associated with the robbing of the town till--would be like a group of friendly, supportive brothers and sisters and friends, siblings in crime. Would that really be punishment adequate for stealing the royal seal and running off with it to Baruba? I say no. And just jail and a fine is out too.

Anything, I think, must be a better punishment than just jail, which, according to my son, can be an okay place indeed! My son claims he experienced clear unbroken good dreams for three nights straight while he had to be in jail once for not paying a fine--and wouldn't mind going back. In fact, he told me with an expression of tender reminiscence on his face, one of the guards had invited him to a party right after he got out, and they had gone on out together into the evening to have a good old time that very moment. We would not want our embezzling assistant clerk out partying and having good dreams would we? Clearly a short jail term cannot be sufficient punishment for such dishonesty and disingenuity: indeed, might not said jail experience encourage more of the same?

I am for the support group, yes, but also a short prison term. Three months in prison--just long enough for PTSD to set in and establish a pattern of psychological instability leading to a future disability check might suffice as punishment both to the criminal and the society which nourished him. That, and a fine. Prison and a fine are of course the least of the punishment. The worst by far, and the most enduring,is the support group.

In prison, which is the one with the tiny room and the clanging doors and the impenetrable grimness of aspect and hopeless daily dreariness, the condemned man or woman would have BAD dreams--probably about not getting away with the rainy day fund after eleven successful years of doing so while even best friends never knew. Worse still, probably no more yearly visits to Baruba. But the special combination of support group, counseling with Dr. Phil, and a short prison term seem.....appropriate.

Perhaps, indeed, these people are destined to do this for our public amusement. And of course, not funny to consider--or maybe funnier, depending on who you are--there are those who are still at this moment getting away with it, our poor dishonest fellow human beings who, though currently content and successful so far at their dark, secret doings, remain at imminent risk of being suddenly arrested and inserted into a support group for life. It would seem quite a deterrent, wouldn't it?

Hestia's Slave--a lament

LAMENT OF HESTIA'S SLAVE

I am bound to Hestia--am her slave:
Every day she binds me to her service.
I wonder where my muse has gone.

For when I come to write, I sweep instead,
No holy words, no light and confession--
And when you come to the end of confession,
It cannot be long to the end of ends.
Venerable poets would say, wouldn't they,
The task to write a poem is holy?

But Hestia will not let me go and write.
Someone of sufficient stature must
Be made to sweep the house in endless hours:
She turns to me. I fear these twilight beings
Who walk in shades of truth and beauty here
Won't come to whisper in my ear again.

"Here-- take this" she says, and holds me out the broom.
"Prepare their rooms for them. They've traveled far
And need a night of peace and quiet now.
Perhaps their dreams will drift on down to you
While you are sleeping on the hearth--now go."

Poets long must toil, I know,
Never-ending days and nights,
Keeping house for Hestia's guests.
I am bound to Hestia, am her slave:
Every day she binds me to her service.
Oh, how I want my muse to come again! (6/4/10)

Right or Wrong; Creationistically enriched curriculum espression and history

The phrase "right or wrong?" may denote the question of accuracy. Are the facts right? Are they wrong, not true to the "real" situations, the facts of circumstance in time and in geography--do they have a factual existence in this world? Do you have those facts right or wrong?

But are you going to teach just the facts?

The traditional teaching of history in its highest standard tries to be right in this sense. But the phrase "right or wrong?"also connotes the question of morality: is it right or wrong, what is written about a given history of America? We all heard about the changes in the words in the history texts in Texas, and the man who promoted those changes. He is viewing history in another light, one in which right or wrong has nothing to do with facts or accuracy of portraying history. He does not care for history that is right or wrong in fact only. He wants to teach children more than the facts.

Are our children to be informed or saved? I thought there was supposed to be a separation of church and state. In one part of our country we want to teach factual history in school; in another, we want to teach the same history we teach in church in school. What deos the church teach? An organized view of the world which reflects specific cultural views belonging to the people who share that view, the facts be damned. Do you know which part of the country you're in? Is your history right? Or is it wrong? It depends on where you live.

I am reminded I am a self-defined textbook language specialist. Maybe I should present at a conference in the Land of the Enemy. When it comes to textbooks, I know what's right or wrong.

The right history--a private matter.

There is a man in the news who charges academia is leftist, and right wing perspectives are not being taught, so maybe teachers in teacher's colleges are being taught to teach our children a history (let alone science) which is not "right". Creationism is the right wing's version of science, and the scientific method, discovering evolution, decidedly leftist. But this man is going beyond science into history. What is, I would like to know, Creationism's view not only of science but of history? Is it the same scripture which explains, explicates and venerates both or what? What is history in the Creationistic view and why should it have anything to do with Other interpretations (promoted by left-wingers according to this interviewee)--of history? All histories are stories we know. But why, I ask why, does the right wing explanation have to be the "right" one? That's what this man says it is, and he fears it is not being taught in the schools because it is leftist, and therefore, apparently, "wrong."

Not being taught in schools? Can there be a "right" (is there a moral imperative involved?) perspective of science and history? One is a method and what that method produces, one is a story, produced by a human mind out of chaotic, disparate parts we call "facts." What has "right" to do with this collective story carved out of time or the portrait of natural disclosure? The rightness or wrongness is in the learner's and the teacher's domain, and conveyed as in a conduit, via their relationship, as it turns out, social--so is the nature of good pedagogy I am convinced. The teacher and student need to know each other and speak to each other in order for education to occur. As Dewey concurred, all learning is social.

In an age which says "right" is relative anyway (that would be the leftist view), why are we arguing about what is taught in school?

The facts M'am, just the content. Reading, writing, arithmetic get us to them, but human nature, simple natural cognitive growth, gets us to question them, the facts which constitute the produce of science and history. It is "right" that we teach in school (as Robert Frost articulated) reading and writing and math, the "right" interpretation of the facts being left to each individual who learns these skills. The tutelage of a teacher or teachers one's parents hires to guide one in making a story of history and glimpsing the dazzling mysteries of science, both in all their beauty and what it portends--this might well be the form schools take in the future: parents who want their children to study history and science, and after that art, theology and philosophy hire a tutor or team of tutors, reading, writing and arithmetic being taught in public school until they master it. The rest is a private matter, as nature ordains.

Poem about reparation (I think)

OVERDUE


I have sorely neglected you my friend,
Cut you out of my will, stopped the letters
Between us by stopping the ones on my end.
How have you been all this time?

Has your penchant for beauty flagged?
Has your rage subsided or vanished?
Have all your photographs been tagged?
Do you still compose in rhyme?

I am languishing here in fetters it seems,
All my better dreams seem banished
To after thoughts and day dreams.
I am caught in the clutter and grime

Of sorting through pennies for silver collection,
Facing the ancestors, aping my betters,
Making repairs--there's natural selection:
Can sweeping be some sort of crime?

But still my garden remains for me
My dearest, deepest sanctuary.
Here I'm always on the mend,
Here my photographs are tagged,
Here are all my better dreams
Sorted out in perfect collection.
Here all comes together for me.

The Being of Being

In his recent blog Being and Heidegger Frederick Turner questions the existence of "being," seeing poetry does well in China where the verb to be does not exist. One response to him was by someone who questioned the motives of professors in college who won't accept papers written with to be, or "helper" verbs as we used to call them. I wrote:

Professors who are not accepting papers with to be verbs in them are just trying to be followers of scripts given to them forty years ago which in essence stated all to-be verbs must be suspect, because we want our language to be expedient, and not necessarily merely human. To be or not to be, Hamlet couldn’t decide; but he meant live or die, or both and surely more too. Can being stand for everything, and when missing from a language stand for nothing? Its absence from language is only slightly limiting on reality--that which exists in a human being's mind.



BEING

Being human is to be human
But are human beings to be
Or to just have been, forever amen?
I am that I am that I am
By any tense just was just for then
And only then, and not again.

Observation on myself in the 3rd person 1973

After that she learned to steward her supply of otherworldly emotions, learned how not to spend them wantonly at the slightest sight of something beautiful. She cultivated a certain stirring calm and peaceful feeling within which she alone could enjoy moments of inexpressible exuberance. Still, she never ceased wanting to share a vision of beauty with someone, only discovered a better way of waiting until she could have it. She pledged herself to an appointment in the future, building on the contingencies with her past, learning from them she told herself, always preparing. The security blanket she wove for herself out of these caccooned her through a cyclical passing of seasons patterned in pain and lose: her home, her marriage, two of her children, several of her best friends. She not only survived, she very nearly succeeded in bringing the future so close she could see it and feel it all around her.

Haiti

HAITI

You were the place I chose to make my book
Be about--love in Haiti, not in Maine.
I went to you in a traveler's handbook,
Studied all your flowers, soups, and history,
Studied your Iron Market, Port-au-Prince
Where all my characters, or most of them,
Walked, picked wildflowers, bought art
From native artists, fell in love with love.
Though I really, really never went there,
I know your white streets, and mixes
Of races, all shades of humanity.

Your forests were abundant then, it said,
My handbook did, which in the cold winter
Of Fryeburg, Maine I read, then wrote of you.
Haiti with its long road to The Citadel--
I had my lovers picnic in its shade,
The trip by mule they took up to it--
It was a lovely country, my handbook said.
The people all made music, grew coffee,
Worshipped voodoo gods, were gracious, and poor.

Now your forests are gone to help your own
Cook breakfast in the morning, your concrete
Is weak and crumbling. Now your harbors
Are sickened with fish-thickened sewage,
Your shores have become the dump of the world --
And this was before your earthquake came.

Haiti, home to all who know and love her,
I bow to your heart and perseverance
And wonder at your long endurance.
And if your tale of woe is our own warning
Let it teach our Haitian hearts to sow
The seeds of love upon your shores
Where once again a paradise might grow.