Monday, December 28, 2009

Soup of the Day: Comparing Apples to Onions

I intended for my writing today to be fueled by the idea of omnicentricity and one of my favorite poems by Wallace Stevens titled “Anecdote of the Jar.”


I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

 

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

 

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

 

But I kept getting sidetracked by random thoughts.  For example, I can’t stop thinking about a phenomenon called “street light blindness.”  It seems there are two optical events that need to be recognized in street light installations.  The loss of night vision because of the accommodation reflex of drivers’ eyes is the greatest danger.  As drivers emerge from an unlighted area into a pool of light from a street light, their pupils quickly constrict to adjust to the brighter light, but as they leave the pool of light, the dilation of their pupils adjusts to the dimmer light much more slowly, so they are in effect driving momentarily with impaired vision.  The other thing that should be considered when placing a light on a street is that oncoming headlights are more visible against a black background than a grey one.  Less threatening, but also interesting, is the notion of light pollution, which results in urban areas when artificial light hides the stars and interferes with astronomy.  A bit more menacing is the fact that light pollution can disrupt the natural growing cycle of plants.

This idea of blindness (or other related detrimental effects) caused by light came to me today because yesterday I was considering the idea of living one’s life with the goal of doing no harm.  (I was struck by the irony that ineffectually placing lights could do more harm than good.)  “Doing no harm” is a term often associated with the field of medicine, as in the theory of nonmaleficence that is taught to medical students: given an existing problem, it may be better to do nothing than to do something that risks causing more harm than good.  In other words, the cure can be worse than the illness.  (Consider the process of searching for enlightenment and the problems one can encounter along that path…)

But I am sidetracked again when I recall that a friend of mine once said that her armpits smell like hamburgers when she sweats.  (I know this is quite a leap, and sometimes I don’t understand the workings of my synapses and why I store such information, and how it is connected.  But not to worry.   Wallace Stevens says, “What our eyes behold may well be the text of life, but one’s meditations on the text and disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.”  He also says, “It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.”)

Anyway, once armpits were on my mind, I had to do a little research.  And, of course, there was a website on the topic of why Girls Smell Like Onions.  (Close enough to hamburger for me.) Evidently women’s armpit sweat contains a relatively high level of a sulfurous compound which when mixed with naturally occurring bacteria turns into a thiol that smells malodorously something like onion.  (I also discovered that men tend to smell like cheese, but I will consider that later.  Maybe.)  Perhaps the onion stayed on my mind today the same way it stayed on my hands when I was cutting one up to go in a pot of soup this morning.  I tend to think we focus our attention where it needs to go, so I allowed my mind to follow the onion path.  I have been doing a lot of reading on symbolism lately.  So it seemed natural to consider the onion as a symbol.

I am constantly delighted by the way everything in the universe is connected, so I was not really surprised when I happened upon a blog titled The Universe As An Onion, which discusses the symbolism of this edible bulb.  The blog author notices that when one cuts an onion from top to bottom, the center is similar in appearance to that of an eye.  She also mentions the practice of placing onion over the eye sockets of the deceased so they could see.  This seems somehow ironic when one considers the eye irritation that can occur when cutting up onions.  Having never been a corpse, I can’t report on the effectiveness of the previously mentioned practice, but I have read that onion has been used medicinally since ancient times to prevent flatulence, anemia, and to cleanse the digestive system.  And back to the idea that a cure can contain negative side effects, it should be noted that the more phenols and flavonoids onions contain, the more antioxidant and anti-cancer activity they provide.  For example, the boldest flavored shallots seem to inhibit the growth of liver and colon cancer cells more than the milder tasting varieties of sweet onions such as the Vidalia.

Of course, my second grade teacher pointed out that onions owe much of their distinctive flavor to the olfactory sense.  She blindfolded us and had us hold our noses as we tasted bits of onion and apple.  The result was that we could not distinguish between the two. 

It seems appropriate at this point to mention that when cutting an apple crosswise, the seeds are each cut in half and form the shape of a star.  This small display of beauty also ruins the seeds in that they can no longer be planted to produce more apples. This was the inspiration for my poem, “Spin Art.”

 

“Inappropriate…” the ceiling fan whispers again, barely audible,

sounding softer than the skin on the wrist near the altar boy’s pulse,

meaning clearer than the whistle from a distant train.

“Follow the cycle of the crescent,” it would say.

 

Drawn to the blade by the promise of the blade,

pulled higher on the breeze like the loose end

of a half-freed gossamer scarf, woven to be twisted

and twisted, pulled, spiraling, whirling, and dancing on toe,

 

I mince around the center of that dark satisfaction,

until dangling by brainstem, I watch the others

spinning past and past and gone.  “Time to stretch now!”

Pulled like a weed with too much root, too much anchor,

too much need to just turn loose and spin free in the wind.

 

At a critical point, the spiral ceases to expand.  No reverse. 

So I travel the same territory over and around.

Not enough lift, not enough drag, not enough heart.  Not enough.

Sounds smooth, you say?  “Yes, but only till the sockets start to give.”

 

No fanfare, please, and no party colored banner printed out one night

in soft staccato stops and starts with all its tentatively connected parts

less meaningful than dandelion seeds lined up head to toe

along some specially selected crack of a dry July sidewalk.

 

“The only still point is the center.”  Invisible,

unless they cross-section to see if my seeds form a star.

But once you make that slice, you break forever

the silver-green membrane around each gentle potential.

And what kind of tree would a half-seed grow?

 

All the murals pick up speed until they move outside

the need to be specific.  One tree, one leaf, one green…

like a dry grass brush was dragged along the whole wet mess of eternity.

Clouds and shoulders.  Leaves and toes.  All together now!

One red dot, one last line, fine red stripe.  “One last time?”

 

Note:  I always reassure my creative writing students that most poets write about suicide at some point in their career.  It is just part of that bouncing back and forth that the brain can’t seem to keep from doing.  And while suicide can be thought of as the complete antithesis of doing no harm, it can also be a source of beauty when considered poetically, which leads me of course to one of my favorite poems, “in a middle of a room” by E.E. Cummings:

in a middle of a room

stands a suicide

sniffing a Paper rose

smiling to a self


"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes

people are in real:imagine

somewhere real flowers, but

I can't imagine real flowers for it I


could, they would somehow

not Be real"

(so he smiles

smiling) "but I will not


everywhere be real to

you in a moment"

The is blond

with small hands


"&and everything is easier

than I had guessed everything would

be;even remembering the way who

looked at whom first,anyhow dancing"


(a moon swims out of a cloud

a clock strikes midnight

a finger pulls a trigger

a bird flies into a mirror)

 

One last handful of things to consider today: 

1.     In the Middle Ages, onions were such an important food that people would pay for their rent with onions and even give them as gifts.

2.     There is an old tale of a shipwrecked man washed up on a beach covered with diamonds, which are worthless in that country.  All he has with him is a bag of onions, which are highly unknown, and therefore highly valuable, there.  He is rewarded for the onions with a shipload of diamonds.  When his brothers go back there with garlic, hoping for more diamonds, they are rewarded with the most valuable thing in the country, a bag of onions!

3.     When considering why precious stones are precious, Aldus Huxley deduces that it is because they are objects in the external world—along with fire, stained glass, fireworks, pageantry, theatrical spectacle, Christmas tree lights, rainbows, and sunlight—things which most nearly resemble the things that people see in the visionary world.  Poets and storytellers, by giving us a mystic vision of these objects with gemlike qualities, bring us into contact with the visionary world and potentially stimulate our own visions within us.

4.     Stevens says: How full of trifles everything is!  It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

5.     If you have trouble quieting your mind today, you can always go to: www.mediheaven.com where you can be lead through a “rapid relaxation” session.  In only four minutes, “you’ll feel like you’re in paradise.”  It is free.  Of course, you can gain “unlimited access” to increased clarity, purpose, balance, optimism, and energy for only $79.00 US.  Onions not accepted.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Points for Jeffrey...

             “Look at me, Jeffrey.  Jeffrey, look at me.  Jeffrey, I need you to listen to me.  Leave your utensils alone, get your feet out of the chair, and put your hands in your lap.  Jeffrey, if you don’t look at me and listen, you are going to lose a point.  Jeffrey…”  This was typical of the one sided conversation I heard each night at the table next to ours. 

I have been gone for over a week.  On vacation.  My favorite kind of vacation.  One in which I have no plans and no obligations.  This is because I benefit sometimes from examining my life from a bit of a distance in order to recognize the patterns that surround me on a daily basis.  We went to the Caribbean where I spent a lot of time walking, reading, sunning and thinking.  And I must admit, it was a little strange being in a warm climate, beside the ocean at Christmas time.  I have always been one of those festive fiends who start celebrating Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.  Pulling out old Greenberg turkey boxes filled with years of handmade decorations.  Baking cookies, making candy, and tacking up strings of blinking lights while making as few nail holes as possible around the windows and across the roofline.  When all of my kids grew up and were in college and in the military, I still tried to make things special for them, even though they might be home for only a few days at a time.  But over the past few years, some of the yuletide enthusiasm has seemingly been drained out of me.  Even the introduction of the Dave to our family seven years ago didn’t entirely rekindle my Christmas spirit.  So I thought about this while I was away… David and I don’t usually give each other presents anymore--at least, not in the traditional sense.  A few years ago we deliberately turned away from the tendency to overspend and get ourselves in debt by buying a bunch of stuff that didn’t satisfy anything in either of us.  We realized that it was just adding stress to the season.  

So we don’t give each other things anymore.  Instead, we just spend the holidays together and take time to appreciate how lucky we are to have had each other for the past 32 years. We tend to use this time to make plans for the upcoming year, and we dare to dream about the many things we could do if we really wanted to change our lives.  My most memorable gift this year was the realization that I don’t really want to change very many things about my life.  I am such a lucky person.  I talked to a lot of people who work a lot harder than I do for a lot less money.  I heard stories of hardworking people who sacrifice their personal relationships by spending months at a time away from their families so they can send home their paychecks to make the lives of their loved ones more bearable.  I saw a lot of people who were old, in poor health, and a lot who were just unhappy.  I saw a lot of families like Jeffrey’s.  Physically together, but miles apart emotionally.  And I realized that my childhood had been much like that.  I wasn’t a bad kid (and I don't think Jeffrey is either) but I could not go to a restaurant, or a playground, or a theme park, without getting jerked up by the arm at some point during the outing and threatened with dire consequences if I did not behave.  I don’t have any pleasant childhood holiday memories involving my family.  And I think that’s why I was so determined to make Christmas special for my kids.  But decorations and cookies and presents aren’t the only things that make memories.  Being present, supportive, responsible, thoughtful, and doing no harm—these are the things that make life memorable and filled with hope and strength.  I sincerely hope to give and receive these gifts this year.  And I hope that someday Jeffrey will look back on this time in his life and have a holiday epiphany.

I will conclude with a poem.

 

THESE ARE THE THINGS

I WILL REMEMBER

WHEN I’M VERY OLD

 

the breath-shaking beauty of your body

leaning toward me, hips forward

in ways I never fully understood

 

the naked longing in your eyes

and the million ways you look at me

as though you know my secrets

 

you know my secrets

before I do

 

before I knew you

I was a hollow globe

seldom shaken

and I almost never saw it snow

 

before you spread into this space behind my eyes

I wore my inspiration like a dark red robe

thought that flying dreams were a gift

learned that lying in your arms

answered the questions

swelling in my chest

formed long before I knew the value

of swelling

or punctuation

 

you are the coat I wear on Monday

to remember Sunday’s warmth

 

when I am old

I will remember that spreading my fingers

left beautiful spaces

did not make flying more difficult

did not leave me vulnerable to cold

did not limit the number of times

I was able to touch you

Friday, December 4, 2009

My Funny Valentine

It’s a strange habit, writing daily, or at least semi-regularly.  (Of course, it has been a few days since I have written, so that puts me on the verge of writing sporadically…)  It doesn’t seem to matter whether the writing takes the form of a poem, a journal entry, a blog, or a more deliberate installment in a series of memoirs, just the practice of putting words on a page change the brain for the rest of the day.  It seems for me that writing forces me to respond to my life instead of merely letting it wash over me.  I wonder sometimes what makes people want to read my writing.  Is it a form of voyeurism?  Curiosity?  The need to connect to another human without making a commitment?  I follow a handful of blogs and the reason I do so is that I am always looking to be surprised.  I am seeking that little mental growth spurt that happens when I read something I was not expecting to read.

Some days my brain is so hungry!  Just now I was reading a book by David Sedaris.   Naked.  (Not me.  That’s the title of the book.)  And I was listening to Chet Baker and had the TV on beside me, too.  Sometimes it seems that only when I am on the brink of overload am I contented.  I know this must impact my students at times.  I am always throwing things at them in rapid-fire succession.  Not literally throwing things.  Ideas.  And it usually takes seeing a mild reaction of panic come across a few faces to remind me to slow down, give examples, elaboration, room to react.  After all it is my interaction with them that makes my day feel successful.  It is as mentally satisfying as reading, writing, listening to music, watching TV, and drinking coffee all at once!

The thing that has been recurring in my mind lately is a strange and sudden realization of humanity.  I am not sure how to explain what I mean here.  For example, the first time I watched the movie The English Patient, a bit player came on the screen at the very beginning, and something in my brain clicked.  This is a person with emotions, thoughts, fears. The actor didn’t even have a speaking role.  It had nothing to do with the movie.  It was just seeing the spark of electricity in his eye, a reminder that his body was a living organism.  Very difficult to explain satisfactorily.  And I am not sure why that particular actor impacted me so.  Perhaps I was just open to it at that moment.  Perhaps he was an exceptionally good actor, gifted in the subtle portrayal of what it means to be human.

I was reminded of this again when my dog died a few years ago.  I was with her at the vet’s office and she was having a heart attack.  She was quite old and the doctor explained that the most compassionate thing we could do for her was help her stop suffering.  I will never forget that second when her life ended and her eyes became cloudy and her body suddenly seemed heavier. 

I can’t really justify the emotion that wells up in me as I write this memory.  Of course, I miss her.  She was a spectacular friend.  I miss her quirkiness and her humor.  And I miss her even more for my husband.  They were so in love!  But even in the sadness of her being gone, I love the emotion of missing her, my ability to dwell in the melancholy moment, the somewhat selfish reassurance that my heart can be so filled with feeling that it overflows, and tears run down my cheeks.

Sometimes when I am writing, David comes in and reads over my shoulder.  I warned him today not to.   It’s okay if I cry, but I don’t want to make him sad.  He doesn’t seem to have my abstract appreciation for sadness.  It just hurts him.  He is the kindest person I have ever known.  And I know he will read this.   In his own way he is also curious about the emotions and motivations of those around him.  I know he will read this.  He won’t be able not to.  So I will close with this bittersweet but mostly sweet memory for him.  Remember how Dave used to come into our house when he was just a toddler and head straight for Lady and without even saying a word take off his shoes and socks and rub his little bare feet on her fluffy belly and how they were both so happy and satisfied and connected?

It’s a strange habit, this storing of emotions.