Changes

Sometimes you just know when it’s time to do something about your life. Sometimes you have to read the signs.

I quit smoking 14 years ago. Last year, for reasons that are still completely inexplicable to me, I started again. I hadn’t missed smoking, in fact it was, after only 5 years being a quitter, as if I had never smoked at all. I didn’t crave cigarettes, didn’t like the way they smelled, didn’t miss the psychological “oral” pleasure they had given me before. My whole life changed to exclude cigarettes, and then, suddenly, I had to include them again. I didn’t even own an ashtray.
It made me angry that it was so easy to become just as addicted to tobacco as I had been before, but that didn’t make me stop. Neither did the threat of cancer, which I had 3 years ago and survived; the knowledge that I would be even more susceptible to the nasty effects of cigarettes didn’t scare me away. I started up again as if I had never stopped, and before I knew it, I was caught in tobacco’s web.

Until this weekend. Just as inexplicably, I knew it was time to quit. And I did. I feel no ill effects from the withdrawal, I don’t miss them, and I’m not even eating more…I just “knew” it was time to put them away, and so I have, again.

What drives these urges, anyway? What cycles force our desires like this? I just don’t know. I’m not willing right now to explore the deeper meanings of these events—I’m glad I am a non-smoker again, and that I can wake up without lighting up, and drive my car, or talk on the phone without the urge, also. It feels liberating. It feels normal. Smoking didn’t feel that way—and yet I did it for a year. Whatever psychic or subconscious machinations that are deep within my brain or soul will stay there, and stay there undisturbed. I’m back to my “real” self as a non-smoker, and relieved I am able to be so.

As if to mark the occasion of this mental shift, last weekend I ran into not one, but three old friends, and connections I had thought to be severed were renewed. The first was a person who told me my last communication had been “cryptic to the point of bitter.” It wasn’t true—not at all—but it startled me that it had seemed that way to him; I wondered how many others had seen it that way as well. The second meeting was joyous—a woman friend I had lost contact with and occasionally wondered about. I was thrilled to see she was happy, healthy and had the children she'd always wanted. The third was the most startling; an old flame, with whom my dealings had been incredibly intense, and which had been both the most satisfying relationship I’d ever had and, at the same time, the most frustrating. That one just threw me into a tailspin.

All summer long I've been seeing signs and portents and messengers in the form of eagles and hawks. They seemed to follow me wherever I went, on every road trip, at every turn. I kept my psychic ears and eyes open for the message they presaged, but until this weekend, I did not have a clue as to what it was. Now I know something is coming at last; something I won’t be able to ignore. There are definite changes in the air—the Wheel is beginning to turn again, and I can almost hear the gears creaking, feel the wind of its movement whistling in my hair. I’m not worried, I’m excited. I’m no longer stuck at the end of Summer, no longer sitting still while life washes over me…Change is palpable.

And today, for the first time in months, I saw the hawks again. This time I think I'm ready.

Stuck

Summer’s officially over as of today. I’m so glad. And yet…

…Every year about this time, I feel a deep lassitude creeping over me; I don’t want to do anything. I get a sluggishness during the last days of Summer; a lethargy, a weariness to be done with all the enforced fun of June, July and August, along with an apprehension about the end of the growing season. Put away the mowers, the grills, the weed-whackers, the garden hoses. Pull up the burnt-out annuals, rake up the mulch, turn the compost pile. Mark the spots where the summer bulbs lie, so they can be lifted at before the first freeze. Get rid of the pile of garden tools on the porch, and move them back to the basement. Yank up that brown cucumber vine, pick those last peppers and tomatoes, thin out those strawberry plants. Sweep the sidewalks. All this is yet to come, as I cannot do any of it right now. The sloth has penetrated too profoundly. I’m stuck.

I feel a boiling resentment toward retail merchants for allowing the warm wonderful Autumn-colored artifacts on their shelves to share space with the opulent reds and greens, golds and silvers of the distant Christmas holiday season. The bile rises in my throat as I try to admit both color families into my mind’s eye, and cannot; the two arrays clash and vie for attention equally, diminishing both. I find I can’t get energized about Autumn with the looming pressure of December’s holidays trying to divide my psyche—it’s too much color and too disparate. One is warm, the other chilled. One is wood-grain, leaf-mould, pumpkin and spice, the other is ice, glitter, crinkled shiny paper, sweet sugar icing. They don’t mesh and they don’t share—it’s like two warring mothers-in-law fighting over the same grandchild.

And all the color and growth in the front garden has begun to feel disproportionate and out-of-control. The alyssum, so petite, so frothy-white, has started to encroach on the sidewalk it is supposed to border; I must step over it to get to my front steps. The lemon grass, a tiny, compact little clump at the beginning of June, has now arched completely across my path and wets me with heavy dew every morning on my way to work, spoiling my clothes. The datura is still producing riots of huge yellow flowers, but the leaves are beginning to die off revealing stems in twisted haunted-house shapes, and testicle-shaped seed pods that hang from them. Like some grotesque group of flashers with huge bouquets in their arms, they dominate the front fence, but the blossoms have begun to turn their angelic faces away in embarrassment.

Morning glories that covered the porch-end with sweet purple and pink trumpets just a month ago, are now hanging yellow, bedraggled and thin, and have stopped blooming, almost infuriating me in their death throes, they are so hideous. They choked out my clematis, and now they droop on the lattice in revenge, dropping seeds into the ground so that next Spring I will be doing twice the work weeding them out. Sunflowers hunch over like whipped old men in ragged clothes. The zinnias are rusting on their tall stems, the celosia has bolted. It’s as if all the plants and flowers have bankrupted their energy in a rebellion of wild growth, overcompensation and ruinous, gluttonous excess. It makes me want to hack it all down with a machete. I find myself longing for the spareness and simplicity of bare branches, gray skies and winter wind.

And, as if to stem this raging tide of intemperance, the sun has begun to curtail its brightness. The days grow shorter. The morning light grows thinner. The nights are cooler, the skies are less luminously blue. It’s about time. Perhaps this languorousness will lift soon, and I can begin to cut things back, chop them down, dig them up and cover their roots; perhaps I can haul my summer accessories inside, clean and empty my mower, stow my tools. I need to swamp out my dusty, summer-muddled house. I need to sweep and wash and freshen, replace the greens and turquoises and magentas with ambers, golds, deep satisfying reds and toasty comforting browns.

This transition is short. Soon the color and passion of Autumn will give way and be replaced by first the holiday glitter, then the austerity of Winter, and there will again be an epoch to endure. After the Solstice, my impatience will begin to grow with the length of the daylight, until the grayness becomes irritating and I once again yearn for the tenderness of those first snowdrops, the first delicate blades of green grass pushing up through the brown, the first bright tulips and daffodils, bonnetlike blossoms nodding on gently-scented breezes, and the smells of a planet waking up from its long sleep. Until then, I’m stuck with this stopped clock, this molasses vitality that refuses to move, or do, or think, or plan. I can’t do anything yet.

I’m stuck.

The Revenge of the Anal Spider?

Okay, this is starting to resemble a soap opera. A badly-written soap opera.

After a week of speculative mourning for my little anal spider, whom I assumed had been eaten by the invading praying mantis, I got the shock of my life this morning when I checked the cedar bush outside our office. She was back! This time, she had built her web another 8 inches further left, and angled so as not to catch the breeze which is still blowing hundreds of puffs of thistledown everywhere. The spider looked satisfied, her web was clean; the unique angle kept the blowing thistledowns from sticking to it. What an engineer she is! My admiration knows no bounds.

And as if that were not enough, when I went out there at lunch, expecting to see the web full of thistle, I was in for another shocker. There was the mantis! She was slowly making her way over the bush, away from the web--and as I watched her slow progress through the branches, I noticed something else: she is missing half her right front arm! The spider hung onto the center of her web resolutely, and perhaps a bit smugly as the wounded mantis tried desperately to grab cedar sprigs with her non-existent front hand. One could almost see her grin.

I'm impressed. And I can't wait for the next installment.

A more appropriate god

I think we should dump our mythology, religion and our attachment to the god of the Christians, and take up a new god—one more appropriate to our mind-set in this country. The god I would like to propose is Janus.

Janus was the Roman god of gates and doors, and is most often represented by a two-headed man facing in opposite directions. He is celebrated as both the embodiment of birth and death, backwards and forwards, harvest and planting, etc. etc. etc. During times of war, the door to his temple was open and invited all in to take comfort. In times of peace, it was closed, presumably because one did not need comfort and succor. In other words, he’s the perfect representation of our hypocritical culture.

When did we become such an ambiguous people? And why?

When I was growing up, (back in medieval times,) there was pretty much one direction your life should take: that of progress onwards and upwards. If you were poor, you wanted to be rich, if you were young, you wanted to be older. There was no benefit in being a child. Children had no rights, no responsibilities, no power. Those things were granted to adults, who were, presumably, going to act in your best interests by caring for you, seeing to it that you were fed, clothed, housed and educated. When you gained experience and years, and had made all your mistakes, you were granted these things as well, to pass along to your own children. So the progress was made, and the evolution of the species ensured. We were on a track that was headed into a future that would be better because every generation was going to be learning from the errors of the previous generations, and improving the odds of survival, adding to the collective intelligence, and health, and refining the civilization.

Yet somewhere, somehow, we stepped off this track and became hypocritical, two-faced, and the direction was lost.

Why is it okay for us to watch TV shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Will and Grace”, but it’s not okay to be gay? Why do we cluck our tongues at unwed high-school girls who get pregnant, but we think it’s okay for film stars to have babies out of wedlock? How can we listen to rap and hip-hop, yet it’s somehow not all right to actually be black? How can we reject “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” but accept “weapons of mass destruction?” Why do we constantly complain about overweight Americans, but continue to buy and eat “The Ultimate Omelette Sandwich?” Why do we protest abortions, but refuse to provide for the homeless, the abused and the orphaned? How can we justify equal pay for equal work, still pay women two-thirds of what we pay men? How can we preach Christian words, but wage war and promote prejudice against those who are not Christian? Why do we pour trillions of dollars into the military-industrial complex, and neglect basic human needs?

What’s the problem with us? What happened to our ideals? Our focus? Our desire to live in a better, more civilized world?

During WWII, we waged war against an “evil” empire, who had taken it upon themselves to exterminate an entire ethnic population. Yet to end that war, we exterminated an entire ethnic population. We dropped a bomb on Hiroshima, on completely innocent civilians, wiping out the city. We didn’t see the dichotomy.

We didn’t see the irony. We didn’t see the hypocrisy. We still don’t. It set a precedent.

George Orwell was a prophet. This isn’t much disputed, even now. But his identification of the phenomena of “doublespeak” and “doublethink” are more poignant now than ever. “Peacekeeper Missiles.” “Operation Infinite Justice.” “War against Terrorism.” “Patriot Act.” “Homeland Security.”

From a White House press conference, October 2003:
“THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, it's a one-time expenditure, as you know. And, secondly, because a secure, a peaceful and free Iraq is essential to the security, the future security of America.
The first step was to remove Saddam Hussein because he was a threat, a gathering threat, as I think I put it. And, secondly, is to make sure that, in the aftermath of removing Saddam Hussein, that we have a free and peaceful country in the midst of a very troubled region. It's an historic opportunity. And I will continue to make that case to the American people. It's a chance to secure -- have a more secure future for our children. It's essential we get it right. “

From a BBC News report, July 19, 2005:
Nearly 25,000 civilians have died violently in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, a report says. The dossier, based on media reports, says US-led forces were responsible for more than a third of the deaths. The survey was carried out by the UK-based Iraq Body Count and Oxford Research Group - which includes academics and peace activists.

So goes “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” So goes our future. Onward and upward into the furthest reaches of hypocrisy. Janus bless us.

The Anal Spider, R.I.P

Nature can be so cruel. At least, we think She is cruel. What she really is, is efficient. It's very nearly the same thing.

My little hard-working, anal spider, who tried so hard to keep her ill-placed web clean of debris, has become breakfast for the praying mantis she failed to take note of when she moved in. Oh, the humani--er--spideranity! I found the mantis this morning, looking very self-satisfied, directly under the tattered remnants of the spider's last web. The spider was nowhere to be seen. I assume the worst. Mantises only go where they can eat, and that poor spider was a sitting duck--er--arachnid.

I feel bad. I was hoping she'd find a nice little thistledown-free nook near her original location, and be able to spin her web once more and start catching insects and lay eggs, and *sniffle* raise some kiddies....
... but it was not to be. Ma Nature has decreed that everything is eventually a meal for something else, and my poor little spider was designated as food for the mantis instead of being one of the lucky ones who gets to breed and continue. As much as it saddens us sometimes, it is the circle of life in high relief; sort of like watching a beautiful gazelle brought down by an equally beautiful cheetah on the Discovery Channel. You don't know who to cheer for. The cycle can only continue when everyone is fed.

The Anal Spider, Part II

Chapter two in the saga of the anal spider.

Remember how I told you she had rebuilt her web, all clean and nice again? Well, it got clogged up with thistledown again. Oh, she tried her best to keep it clean and free of the thistle seeds--she really did--but she ultimately lost the battle. You should see the muscles this spider has developed from all the picking and weaving she's been doing. She looks like Schwarzenegger with eight legs.

So for a day or two, she picked them out, dropped them down beneath the web and wove and re-wove the strands. The bush underneath her web has amassed quite a pile of the little white seed puffs. Of course, they're everywhere, but beneath the web but they are also stuck together with little pieces of tattered web, forming a sticky clump.

This morning when I checked on her, I saw that the web was gone again. I could practically hear her little slippered feet stomping away in frustration as she muttered 'Mother Nature--what a slob!'

And just an hour ago, I went out there again, and--yep--the web is back. But it's been moved.
This is one smart spider, I thought.

She'd moved her web over about two feet to the left. The bushes beneath it are free of wind-blown thistle down--it's practically the only place in the garden that is free of the stuff. And she found it. She rebuilt the web, and perched herself in the center, and is now eagerly awaiting the arrival of unsuspecting bugs so she can make herself some well-earned dinner and get those eggs laid.

Only one problem: she failed to notice the huge praying mantis on the bush next door.

Ads of the Week

Here are a couple ads I found amusing. The first one could be a concise summary of the Hurricane Katrina efforts, and the second was just a paean to bad sentence construction.

The Anal Spider

Last week I noticed a large, precisely-woven orb web with an unusual spider between two shrubs outside my office. The spider was interestingly colored, not a variety I'd seen before. I watched her sitting in the center of the web, and wished I could see her move, so I picked a piece of the cedar shrub and tossed it into the web. Well, she moved. She moved fast, and rather petulantly, and immediately went over to the little sprig of cedar and began dismantling the web around it. She then picked up the sprig, which was larger than she was, and rather annoyingly dropped it onto the ground below the web, and then went back to her perch, as if to say, "Sheesh! You build a web, and someone has to mess it up!" Just her attitude and her actions made me think of an irritated clean-freak, with a touch of OCD. I was rather abashed. I felt bad that I had messed up her web, and self-consciously apologized to her for it. I think she actually crossed her arms and gave me a "look".

We also have a large thistle growing near this web. It's blooming and thistledown is everywhere. Later that afternoon, I noticed that the spider web had more than a few of those little puffy thistle seeds (you know the kind--they look like the things you blow off of a dandelion head) caught in its threads. The spider had attempted to pick them out of her web, each time, dismantling more and more of the orb web in the process. I felt rather sorry for her. She obviously wanted a pristine house, and was losing the battle. This thistle is making so many of the seed puffs that it's almost impossible to go into our front office door without disturbing them--like walking through powdery snowdrifts. The poor anal spider had her work cut out for her.

The next day, the web was gone. Only a strand or two remained. She had given up and lost the fight to keep her house clean. So I thought. I didn't see any more of her until this Monday when I came to work and found that she had built a new web, in the same place, all clean and precise just like before. She looked satisfied and smug as she sat in the center of her nice, new, clean web. This time she would win the battle. Before the afternoon was out, however, the thistle seeds were back, and covered the web again. You could just see her shoulders slump, her head hang a little lower, and a tiny tear form in the corner of her compound eye.

But a couple hours later, the web was clean again. Never underestimate the power of the female need to be tidy.

The Mutant Gardener

I love gardening. I have an extensive herb garden, and lots of flowers, mostly in the front of my house. I guess you’d say I have a green thumb. This year, I concentrated mostly on flowers that I planted with an eye toward the various color combinations and the seasons they bloom, so that I always had something blooming; but as every gardener will tell you, sometimes things grow you didn’t plant, and sometimes things happen to those plants that you didn’t expect.

This year, one of my black-eyed susan daisies grew a quadruple center. At left are a couple photos of this phenomenon. It was as if four flowers grew on one stem, and bloomed, and four cone-shaped centers grew together with their petals all squashed into the spaces between. It was pretty strange and sort of ugly. And, it got me thinking about ugly flowers, so naturally, I had to do a web-surf to see if there was a website devoted to the ugliest of the worlds flowers. And of course there is. (There’s a lot of them, in fact.)

In my web travels I found what has got to be the world’s ugliest blossom.
It’s called aristolochia gigantea. The genus aristolochia has some of the most bizarre flowers ever grown on this planet, and none of them are very pretty. They all look like some mutant afterbirth, or some horrid alien being.


Pretty hideous eh? Not only are they ugly, they smell foul. Like carrion. Makes my little four-centered daisy look positively enchanting.

Take a look at this variety (right):
This one is called aristolochia fimbriata.

The gigantea, though, has to be the worst of the worst. I found several pictures of it.

Here is another one, if you even start to think that it isn’t too bad:

This is what the poor thing looks like just before the blossom opens. This “bud” looks like some kind of strange internal organ. And these things are huge! They’re about a foot across.

So--hideously ugly, stinky and too big to hide. What more could a Mutant Gardener want? Well, how about a flower that looks like it’s dripping snot? Yeah. I’d want one of these. This one is called aristolochia grandiflora, though I fail to see what is so grand about it.

This genus has the most hideous blooms I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing what you can find in this world.

It's Sunday

This is me. Taken about a year ago. The face is still the same, but the hair is darker now. I change my hair color and "do" all the time; I get sick of one look very quickly. Urban camouflage.

Worked a concert last night. The performers were The Weepies and Melanie. I'd never heard The Weepies before, and they were really great. Melanie, on the other hand, didn't show up on time, got pissed because there was no honey for her tea, and has lost most of the appeal she used to have. Ah well. She drew a decent crowd at our little theater--so far, the biggest concert we've done since August. When I got home, my knees were about ready to combust spontaneously. They really hurt, but 4 aspirin let me get to sleep.
Don't ever think arthritis isn't a nasty disease--it can make you cry.

*******
Seasonal musing: it's nearly the Fall Equinox, or as I call it, Mabon--the second-to-last holiday in the year. My year goes from November 1 to October 31 and has eight major holidays as follows:

• Samhain: (Hallowe'en to the rest of the world) the New year and Year's End at the same time. You honor and feed the dead who went before, and you pack it in for the long winter ahead.
• Yule: (that's the Winter Solstice, not Christmas). The celebration of the sun's return to longer days and shorter nights, even though you can't see it quite yet.
• Imbolc: (midwinter for us) a celebration of light and contemplation, and renewal, and getting ready for the spring coming ahead.
• Ostara: (Spring Equinox) the "official" return of Spring.
• Beltane: (May Day) the time of planting and growing and celebration of fertility.
• Litha: (Summer Solstice) Midsummer originally, but actually the time when the days begin to grow shorter.
• Lughnasadh: (pronounced LOO nuh say) the first harvest festival, and a time to celebrate all the hard work you've done all spring and summer.
• Mabon: (The end of the growing year) A thanksgiving and reaping time, when you get ready for the end of the year by feasting.

Here's a wheel of the year that illustrates the whole cycle

New to the Blog Biz

Howdy. I'm a bit new to this, so bear with me.


I got into the idea of a blog through joining a CD club; where 12 people get together on the net and exchange a CD every month. Each person is assigned a month to put together a mix CD of their choosing, and they mail it to the other eleven members of the club.

The idea of a CD Club appealed to me immediately. How cool--to put together a mix with your own tastes and music that means something to you, and have others listen, share and comment on it, seemed like a great idea. I think it will be a great way to learn about different people, and the CD will be a great surprise.

As for this blog, I'll get into the writing part as I go along, but for now, I'll just post this and see what happens.