Minkgirl Muses

Labels: Community Muses, Family Life, Mysteries

GRASS

"The grass is never greener," I started saying to myself while living in London. "There's no getting ahead," or "No matter where you go, there you are," might be other ways to say this, but I've been working hard for the past 18 months to cultivate a "glass half-full" outlook on life, so I'll stick with grass. Grass grows in the spring and summer - there's no denying it. Grass withers and dies in the fall and winter - that's true too. But millions of human energy hours are spent each year in the effort to alter this natural equation - to make the grass greener, to make it last longer, to make it plusher, softer, less likely to be nibbled by bugs.

We do the same things with our lives. We imagine that if we can just get concoct the right chemical formula and apply it liberally to the affected areas of our lives, that we will no longer suffer the indignities of the natural cycle - withering, loss, dryness, disintegration, stagnation, being trampled from time to time. What is a good life? All around me I see good-hearted people struggling with this question. The struggle has all kinds of flavors. In this version of my life, I've been given a scoop of quick-melting middle class topped with a scoop of long-lasting post-modern alienation. You might be holding a similar cone. If you are educated, if you have an active mind and a reasonably healthy body, if you have managed to meet your basic needs but still harbor some kind of ambition toward making/gathering/achieving more, then you are probably sharing my struggle. Maybe you are wrestling with your conscience - wondering how your craving for a Pottery Barn leather sofa can be reconciled with your desire to serve meals to the homeless more often at St. Anthony's Dining Room. Maybe you are wrestling with time - trying to "be present" all the time, while keeping your house clean, getting your work done, playing with your kids, and being available to family and friends. Maybe you are wrestling with money - trying to live within your means, save for a rainy day, enjoy the moment, prepare for the future. Maybe you are wrestling with all these things in a 24/7 winner-take-all, no-holds-barred, anything-goes, knock-down-drag-out, monster-truck-grudge-match of mythic proportions.

Maybe, like me, you are so fucking exhausted and bored of this struggle that you'd like to strip off your tattered lycra wrestling suit and run screaming and naked into the nearest lane of oncoming traffic - just for a change. I mean, jesus, what is going on here? Why is it so hard to sink our toes down into the earth and grow the way grass is meant to grow in the soil of this particular place. Why is it so hard to accept that in the natural life cycle there are productive times and fallow times, times full of lush greenness and times punctuated by the crackle and crunch of deadness under our feet. Why is it so hard to be still and resist the urge to struggle?

Be well.

Photo (Winter Grass) by Idle Type

Labels: Community Muses, time

WAVE

When I started my new job 9 weeks ago, I had this little schtick I would trot out for friends and acquaintances who would ask "Are you excited?" or "Isn't it going to be great?! This is your dream job!"

"Yes, I am excited" I would offer, "but I also feel like a novice surfer, eager to catch her first wave, but wondering if instead I will be smacked silly by an unforgiving ocean."

Imagine...It's twilight. I paddle out into the big blue, amidst a scattered company of expert surfers, full of puppy-dog eagerness to get up on my board and show my stuff. I've never actually done this before (except in those silly land simulations where they have you wiggle around on the sand), but I'm hoping with the right combination of focus, effort, and luck, that I'll stand up on my board at exactly the right moment, catch the crest of the wave, and enjoy a glorious ride to the shore. That's what I'm hoping for. But what I'm expecting is that I'll miss the right moment, be sucked into the wave, and that instead of elevating me, the wave will crush me down to the sea floor, and I'll wind up with a mouthful of sand.

And the joke was - since I knew this was going to happen anyway - I wanted to just drive out to Ocean Beach and fill my own mouth with sand (skipping the ocean part) - just get it over with.

Well, I told this story for a few weeks, and then I forgot about it. But it didn't forget about me. The wave that has been moving toward me for the last 9 weeks finally caught me this week, and just as I expected, even though I am sitting on dry land, metaphorically I am coughing and sputtering, trying to clear my mouth of seawater and silt.

I think a lot these days about human energy - how much it has been able to manifest in the world throughout history - and yet also how none of my friends seem to have enough of it right now. Everyone I know, despite elaborate life architecture and their best truest efforts, seems to be getting crushed down into the earth at least once a season.

I think a lot these days about the phrase "Work/Life Balance" - a odd term that I think comes from the corporate world (and which implies that one is not alive at work), but which seems to have infiltrated nearly every work environment, even the alternative ones.

I think a lot these days about my foremothers - my great-grandmother and her friends - and how they probably would have laughed and scoffed at this phrase. "Life is Work" they might have said. I doubt most of them would have thought to want some "Me Time" at the end of a day of kneading, baking, sweeping, feeding, scrubbing, scouring, carrying, cooking, scraping, hanging, ironing, fetching, serving, mending, and minding. They probably wanted less from their lives than we do. But maybe they weren't so twisted and tormented. So guilty and grasping. Maybe they never thought "of course" as the cold waters closing over their heads or felt as oddly comfortable as I am with the feel of grit between my teeth.

You can't turn back the clock though. In our post-feminist, pre-apocalyptic, 21st century urban environment, inside this global pressure-cooker, there seems to be only bigger/faster/stronger/higher/harder waves coming at us, with no calm in sight. Are they even surfable anymore? Is the only solution to find a little protected cove and cut yourself off from the rest of the ocean? Is the storm ever going to pass?

Photo by wentloog

Labels: Career Anxiety, Community Muses, time

Yesterday, several thousand people marched on the streets of San Francisco to acknowledge and protest the 5^th anniversary of the war in Iraq. As the Chronicle noted, this was a drop in the bucket compared with the numbers that protested during the first few days of the war in 2003. A fact that one could find discouraging. While I did join the protestors in 2003, I’m pretty sure that if I had been in San Francisco yesterday, I would not have been among the people on the street. More likely I would have been one of the people stuck in cars trying to cross Market Street, craning my neck out the window to get a glimpse of what was stopping traffic.

If I’d been there, I would have seen some interesting things. I might have witnessed a group of 50 or so people staging a “die-in” outside Senator Diane Feinstein’s office at Market and Third streets (what a clever idea!) Apparently, because they were blocking traffic, most of them were arrested. But they also made an arresting image, one that is being picked up by media outlets across the country. Or, I might have witnessed a small group of young people chain themselves to the front doors of the Federal Reserve Bank, or a group of men in orange jumpsuits and black hoods kneel in a phalanx across Market Street.

These images are potent, as or even more compelling than the more standard protest image of a sea of people marching together. The committed and intrepid citizens who participated in yesterday’s civil action were exercising not only their blessed right of free speech, but also their creativity and ingenuity to get positive attention from the media and to articulate more nuanced and universal truths about the war. In talking about how organized, prepared and communicative the protest organizers have been with the media, Chronicle journalist C.W. Nevius commented, “Back in 2003 the protesters were angry. Now they're trying something new. They're getting smart.”

Now that is encouraging. While I never have been the kind of girl who stands on top of a newspaper box shouting slogans, I might be the kind of girl who dresses from head to toe in black and joins a long line of other women marching silently to express our solidarity with mothers everywhere who are losing their children to poverty and violence. Images like the ones from yesterday’s protest move me one step closer to manifesting the stirrings of my own conscience in more tangible and visible ways.

One of the photos from yesterday’s protest that caught my attention depicts a young woman shouting. I thought to myself, “who is she talking to?” Me. She’s talking to me. And anyone/everyone who, even though we agree with her, isn’t standing next to her with our own mouths stretched open wide. "This is America," said State Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco. "We are not proud. So we say to the world, to the people who are watching, we are Americans, we are against it, and we are sorry."

Thank you San Francisco.

Be well.

Read more about the protest on SF Gate.

Labels: Community Muses

OATMEAL

I’m sitting in front of my favorite window this morning, enjoying the play of winter sunlight on the whitewashed house across the street and eating a bowl of oatmeal. Oatmeal is the breakfast of choice for British women (of course, they call it porridge, a word I’ve never been able to embrace, because it conjures up creepy images of soot-smudged Dickensian orphans for me.) Oatmeal is quick and easy to make for the kids and mums like to eat it too, mainly because it satisfies the four F’s: it’s filling, full of fiber, not fattening, and free! Okay, it’s not actually free, but a box of Quaker oats costs about £1.09 here – the equivalent of $2.25 – and you can get about 20 bowls of oatmeal out of it for an average cost of 10 cents a bowl. I usually doctor mine with some raisins, brown sugar and chopped apple, so throw in another 75 cents for the fancy extras, and you’ve still got a meal that comes in under a buck. But I think mainly women eat it because it helps them lose weight – all the mums I know do anyway. With a glop of oatmeal in your belly, you can go hours and hours without eating again, plus eating something that looks as yucky as oatmeal makes you feel gastronomically virtuous – it’s essentially the opposite of a chocolate bar.

Women’s bodies are such tricky things. It seems that we’re always trying to grow and shrink them according to various alchemical formulas in order to turn ourselves into pure gold. Like Rapunzel, we wake up each day full of hope that we can accomplish this obscenely impossible task, if we’re just a little more diligent, a little more faithful, a little more willing to believe that the perfect body will bring us perfect happiness.

My body has never been more imperfect, but I’ve never been more satisfied with it. First of all, I am THRILLED not to be pregnant anymore. Lord Limescale asked me recently if I feel kind of smug when I pass pregnant women on the street. The answer is “Absolutely!” I want to dance a nasty little jig in front of them while yodeling “Haha chubbo! My baby’s out and I can see my toes again!” And G-d willing, that’s it for me now – any future belly I grow will be of my own and not Nature’s making.

But I think the main source of my satisfaction is that I feel immensely PROUD of my body for what it has accomplished. It grew, carried and birthed a really healthy (and really heavy) baby for a very long time. It produced all the hormones, natural painkillers and other metabolic wonder drugs I needed to make it through these radical transformations, and it now creates and dispenses the perfect food to nourish and grow this baby into a stronger and more capable human. My body did all of this despite the fact that I regularly ate crisps, occasionally drank wine, and often forgot to take my prenatal vitamins during my pregnancy. It did all of this whether or not I got exercise or enough sleep, whether or not I was feeling upbeat and positive or exhausted and depressed. It did all of this because that’s what bodies do, that’s what they’re made for – not modeling Minolo shoes or looking good on elliptical machines. They’re made for life – living it, creating it, enjoying it.

Now lucky for me, I happen to LIKE oatmeal. I didn’t always, but somehow I’ve come around to the pleasure of a warm bowl of organic oats infused with honey, pecans and sultanas (golden raisins) eaten on a cold morning. I eat it because it tastes good to me and it makes me feel good – happily it will also keep my insides healthy and maybe make me a little svelter. As I eat my oatmeal this morning, I salute British women everywhere who are forgoing rashers of streaky bacon (the national food I think) in favor of bowls of steaming porridge. I salute women whose bodies are the very bricks and mortar of the civilization thriving around us – women who wake up each day prepared to give themselves completely to whatever task lies ahead, whether it involves poop or politics – women whose belly skin sags and shifts into mystical formations of wrinkles as they burp and cuddle their babies, women who are packing extra pounds from eating comfort food after a day spent delivering comfort to others, women whose feet are sore from kicking ass in the corporate jungle. I salute you and wish you all the kind of cozy pleasure my oatmeal has brought me this morning.

Be well.

Labels: Community Muses, Mamahood, My Favorite Things

OH OBAMA!

I've never been a particularly well-informed citizen. While I adored my Government class in 10th grade, it's kind of all been down-hill since then. I think my political cynicism set in at about 18, long before it was fashionable in my set - I just don't believe anything that ever comes out of a politician's mouth - maybe it's my director's ears and eyes, but I can hear the subtext of lies and the misrepresentations underneath everything they say, and I can see the light of greedy self-interest flashing behind their eyes. I think people become politicians for much the same reason people become actors - because they like to hear themselves talk and they enjoy having people look at them. It's a rare rare day when you meet someone who does one of these things because they actually believe it can transform the world.

So, I was prepared to believe what I read in the papers about Barak Obama - that he's a nice guy, charismatic, but too inexperienced to survive in Washington, too optimistic to actually get anything practical done. But I ain't singin' that sad media-driven tune any longer. I have seen Obama's marketing material, and I am hooked. He is speaking the message my soul longs to hear - that we are one country, that we are not divided, that our world is not fixed and fatally rocketing toward the doom time, that we can change ourselves, our national identity and our impact on the rest of the world for the better. And here's the thing...he's already won. Whether or not he becomes the next president of the United States, in a short time, he has already transformed our national dialogue. I know there are people who will say that it will all be forgotten in a few short months, but I don't think so. I think the fact that he is gathering so much support so quickly shows that people everyone are hungry to be having this conversation about change. We are starving in fact, for something positive to feed our innate desire to be good and do good in the world. The hope I feel is enough to make me get off my ass and actually do something, like help register people to vote, or walk down the street and talk to my neighbors about the things we care about.

My friend Yosha (can't really come up with a pseudonym for someone with such a cool name) emailed this morning about his support for Obama, and his willingness to temporarily suspend his mistrust of the whole political marketing machine. He invited me to check out this new Obama music-video on YouTube. It's pretty cool. I invite you to view it too. And he shared some of his thoughts about why we need Obama as our next president that I am completely in agreement with:

"Okay, I'm just going to say it: it is way past time, way past time we had a president who isn't white. There are a whole lot of ethnicities in this place, and I'm just sayin'. Sayin' that if we claim to do more than pay lip service to this whole created-equal thing, it's mighty odd there hasn't been the slightest shift in presidential skin tone. That was cute of Toni Morrison and all, but sorry, Bill Clinton was not and never will be black.

Mike Tyson is black, though, and I wouldn't vote for him -- probably because he'd kill me and eat me before I could cast my vote. Ethnicity is a concern, but it is certainly not the only one; rationality also plays a big role. That and scruples. Obama has them. Iowa and South Carolina think he's electable, and I do too. Listen to what he says. It's okay if you're skeptical about rah-rah patriotic American bullshit. You should be, if you're any kind of American worth having. Still, I'm going to vote, and I'll vote for Obama."

Me too. And may God send him an army of angels to clear the path and whisper sense into everyone's ears.

Be well.

Image sourced from www.6seconds.org

Labels: Community Muses

Labels: Community Muses, Family Life

THANKSGIVING

We celebrated thanksgiving yesterday - in true expat style - by having some Brits over for a voyeuristic feast. They were fascinated by the whole affair and had a lot of questions: "Do you give gifts?," "What are yams?," "Is this a celebration of Independence from Britain?"

Their queries made me consider the holiday in a new light, as I explained that it is actually a harvest festival celebrating the memory of the good first harvest that Native Americans helped early settlers achieve and the promise of a winter of plenty instead of starvation. That last part really caught my attention as I said it, and made me finally understand why this holiday is perhaps the most significant one in the American calendar. The Thanksgiving feast isn't just about giving thanks for what we have, it's also about demonstrating to ourselves and our families that we are going to be okay in the future - we have enough to get through the dark time of winter - we will survive. Looking at it in that light, our tradition of over-eating on this day seems less like gluttony and more like a celebration of human potential.

I remember when my sister lived in Africa, she told me how important feast days were in the local community. People who didn't quite have enough to eat on a regular basis would save up their money and spend it all on an occasional blow-out feast, rather than spending it little by little and eating more each day. She said this confused her at first, but ultimately she realized that the joy of feasting was greater than that of an extra daily helping. Feasting makes us feel full and satisfied in a special way - it is something to look forward to - to revel in. And a sense of abundance (even a short-lived one) pushes back the tendrils of mortal dread that perpetually linger in the backs of our minds, waiting for a dark day to sprout.

So while I once considered it foolish to spend 8 hours cooking for the 20-minute pleasure of eating a big meal among friends and family, I am a new convert to the symbolic value of the feast. As I peel potatoes and layer them w/ salt, pepper, nutmeg and cream (my grandmother's recipe for Potatoes Dauphinaise), I am not just making a savory side-dish, I am manifesting the love my grandmother had for her family and that I have for mine in sensory form. And the smell and taste of this dish carry with them a wave of memories, of childhood afternoons spent at other tables, with everyone wearing their best clothes, and football on in the background, and the general warmth and ease of a day when nothing was expected except that we eat and lie around and enjoy each other's company.

I hope you had a good thanksgiving, that you were with people you love (or at least like), and that you too were calmed and coddled by the familiar smells and tastes. I leave you with the beautiful words of my friend Yosha, who eloquently captures what is best about this season:

"Holidays. Little girls (and boys!). The familiar pressure of weather, blankets, families; the density that accumulates at the bottom of the year. We gather what comfort we can and keep it close, hunker down in our pocket of safety, and get slow and rich and sweet and sleepy. It's good to be alive, and to know each other."

Be well.

Photo by caldjr

Labels: Community Muses, Family Life

HOLIDAY

To the two or three of you who are actually reading this blog, apologies for my month-long silence. I've been on holiday. Well, first I was entertaining relatives here in London, then I had the stomach flu, then I went on holiday (to America for my sister's wedding.)

The Brits take their holidays seriously. By law or custom, UK citizens are entitled to 5 weeks of holiday per year - that's 150% more holiday than the average American takes. No wonder everyone here is a little less gripey. British holidays tend to coincide with the scandalously short school terms, of which there are three per year. The fall term begins in September, is interrupted by a week off in October, and concludes with a stunning month off for Christmas. The spring term commences in January, is bisected by another week off in February, and finishes in March with a 3-week Easter holiday (yes, despite the incredible diversity of this country, Christianity still holds sway, at least as far as the calendar is concerned.) Finally, the summer term gets underway in mid-April, includes (you guessed it) a week off in late May, and terminates in mid-July. Everyone in the UK (and apparently the rest of Europe) skips work altogether for the month of August.

Now I ask you - is this not a great civilization? Okay, they suck at technology, manufacturing, customer service, and tapas, but with enough holiday time, you care less about everything else.

Labels: Community Muses

Labels: Community Muses, Family Life

HELP

In her book Traveling Mercies, author Annie Lammott wittily asserts that in all the world there are really only two prayers:

"Help me. Help me. Help me."

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

I think she's right, and I appreciate how these simple words acknowledge the essential impulses that are at the core of everything we do. We are tender towers of flesh moving through a bright, harsh landscape - nearly every day each of us needs some kind of help to do something we want, or get something we need, however small. And when the need is big, and the help comes, the relief and gratitude that floods out of us is as primal and potent as the need was.

Now while I think of myself as a generally compassionate person, I'm not one of those people who go out of their way to help others too often. I mean to be. And sometimes I am - sometimes I actually do get it together to bake a lasagne for my new-parent neighbors, or send a card to an ailing friend even though they're not expecting it. But mostly I do easy things, like take my old clothes to the Goodwill and send small checks to Amnesty International. Mostly I stay safe, and clean, and just think about helping in the bigger, messier ways.

And one of the things that makes giving help so messy is that it exposes you to other people's pain and sadness. If you actually look and listen to another person and truly tune in to their deepest needs, it can be uncomfortable, if not overwhelming. Most of us are only willing to make that dark journey into a few people in our lives - a partner, a sibling, a best friend - and maybe not even then.

Last week, I had an encounter that reminded me how fulfilling the impulse to "help" is not simple or easy. There is a homeless woman in Chiswick, the town I live in. Notably, she is the only homeless person I have ever seen here (except for a male drifter with an aging back-pack who hung around on a corner with his guitar for a week), which seems remarkable for a city neighborhood. She is an almost quintessential figure of a bag lady - 60ish with wild grey hair, completely hunched over, and dressed entirely in black cloth. She wears "shoes" on her swollen feet made of plastic bags, newspaper and rubber bands, and she drags behind her a wheelie-cart loaded down with plastic bags, boxes, bits of paper and string. She is often seen walking up and down certain streets by the tube, but even more commonly, she resides in a secluded bramble-patch at the edge of a parking lot behind my building. In that spot she starts cook-fires, feeds the pigeons, and spends a lot of time screaming. I think she is probably schizophrenic. But I have never seen her bother anyone, or be violent in anyway, or do anything other than hang out alone in the bushes. Intuitively, I think she has chosen to remove herself from society - to go to a place where she can be as she is without really bothering anyone.

I walk through this parking lot nearly everyday on my way to the tube or the shops, and I see this woman at least 3 times a week. When my mom was visiting, we had many conversations about her. I think to my mom, who had just turned 60, this woman was a terrifying figure - a kind of doppelganger of what she could have or possibly still could become if her circumstances shifted for the worse. For me, she was part of the landscape - something I had come to accept as part of the neighborhood, like the brick houses and the tall trees. Here's how some of our conversations went:

Mom: "I can't believe that a town as wealthy as Chiswick can't get it together to help this woman."

Me: "Maybe she doesn't want help. Maybe she's content living as she is."

Mom: "It's obscene that no one does anything for her. She could be any one of us."

Good point. And one that we all know deep down, but easily ignore when we past dirt-encrusted folks with tattered hair and no teeth on the street. "There but for the grace of G-d go I," quickly gives way to "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That she isn't me."

So I mulled on what my mom had said, and simultaneously I cleaned out my closet. I had an old pair of super-soft slippers that I no longer liked and a working (albeit slightly annoying) umbrella that I was prepared to give to the Charity shops. And then I thought, "Maybe I should give them to the Pigeon Lady. Maybe these slippers would feel good on her feet, and she probably needs an umbrella." And I put these things in a bag, and set them aside, and did nothing for many weeks.

I fantastized sometimes about walking up to this woman and handing her the bag. I tried to imagine the conversation we would have - maybe she would be happy about being approached and we would chat about the weather, the pigeons, the beautiful hyacinths blooming in her bramble patch. Maybe it would be a silent exchange, but I would catch her in the eye for a moment and we would see each other. Maybe she would yell at me and be alarmed by my trying to talk to her. There seemed to be a lot of plausible scenarios, and at the bottom of each was a cold little blob of fear - fear that she would do something to frighten Gabriel if I brought him along, fear that she might curse me or worse attack me, fear that I might not like looking in her eyes and really seeing what her life is like.

So, I did nothing. But I thought about it all the time, especially when I passed her on the street. It became a kind of secret I was keeping - my desire to help and my fear to do anything. Finally, I decided that I would leave the bag with a note for her to discover. I added a box of lovely chocolate cookies to the slippers and umbrella, double-wrapped them so the rain wouldn't get through, got out one of my nicest notecards, wrote her a little letter, and stapled it to the front of bag. Here's what it said:

To the Woman Who Feeds The Pigeons:

Hello.
I thought these things might be useful to you.
I hope you are well.
Warmly,

Your Neighbor

I dropped the package off in the bramble patch on a sunny Tuesday morning, pleased that I was finally doing something. Later that morning I passed through the parking lot and saw the woman busy organizing her belongings in the bramble patch, so I knew she had seen my package. At the end of the day, I passed through again, and I noticed what looked like the bag, with the note still attached, sitting on the asphalt beside the bramble patch. There was no sign of the woman. I went over and inspected the bag. Both the bag and the card were unopened. On one side of the envelope, she had scribbled this note back to me:

You are not kind. And you waste your time.
I never take anything from anyone.
See?

A.R.

Tuesday, June 19th

I was startled. I had not considered this as a possible outcome. I felt embarrassed and caught. I put the bag down and started to cross the parking lot, but then it occurred to me that leaving the bag there might cause her distress, so I picked up the lot and carried it with me to the tube station where I tossed it in the bin. So much for good intentions.

Perhaps my initial instinct about this woman was right - she might be living outside on her own by choice - perhaps as a form of protection against past troubles. She was checked in enough to know the date. Or maybe she was offended by being offered something she hadn't asked for - perhaps she feels completely self-sufficient and my clumsy attempt to "help" made her feel angry because it challenged that sense of autonomy. Perhaps she is paranoid and distrustful of others and doesn't like being approached. There is no way to know for sure - no way except maybe trying to talk to her.

So for now, I'm pondering the experience, letting it sit in my heart, and waiting for inspiration to strike and when/how/if I should try to connect with this woman. If I do anything else, I think I will have to stretch much further out of my comfort zone than I am accustomed to. I will probably have to get a bit messy, a bit involved, and open myself up to the truth of this woman's situation, whatever it is. And I'm not sure if I'm up for that. I might be. On a good day. I'd like to be. We'll see.

Wait and see.

Look before you leap.

WAIT.

LOOK.

SEE.

LEAP.

What could be simpler.

Be well.

Labels: Community Muses

WAA-MEE-ZUMS & WAR

Last Sunday we went to the Sceance Waa-mee-zum (also known as the Science Museum). This has become a favorite outing. You take the District line from Stamford Brook a pleasant 8 stops to South Kensington, where you alight on an outdoor platform that is perpetually covered in pigeons. After 3 or 4 minutes of the chase-and-scatter routine, it is safe to carry/climb the two short flights to the station lobby, where you can purchase a cheese & onion pasty to fortify you for the 3-block journey to the waa-mee-zum. At the second intersection you are faced with a difficult dilemma.

There are actually two waa-mee-zums to choose from in this location (dinosaurs to the left, bubbles and button-pushing to the right.) Both are housed in gorgeous buildings (one old, one new), and both are miraculously free. If you’ve ever visited Washington D.C., you will have been impressed by the remarkably diverse array of art and culture that is available for free viewing should you feel like interrupting your stroll on the mall. D.C.’s got nothing on London. The number of free waa-mee-zums here is staggering – you’ve got art, culture, science, and obscure topics like the history of the steam engine and the gestation habits of orchids to satisfy your brain and your wallet.

So, on this particular Sunday, we chose the right fork, and headed into a giant building packed with 4 floors of scientific innovation and mystery. We knew we’d made the right choice when upon entering Gman sighed “I looove the waa-mee-zum.” “It’s called a museum, honey.” “Yeah, waa-mee-zum.” After a quick pass through the rocket-ship exhibit, we headed straight down to the basement laboratory. Here Gman joined other intrepid young scientists in testing gravity by dropping plastic beads through a complicated chute system, filling tanks with water and then dumping them to generate electricity, balancing plastic bricks on a fulcrum point, and making bubbles rise in vats of colored oil. I think there is no greater joy than watching children deeply engaged in the serious work of play, as they figure out what makes this old world tick.

Something else I like about the Sceance Waameesum is that it is relatively safe. The kid’s areas are fairly compact and difficult to escape from, so adults can park themselves against an exit wall and have a nice chat, assuming (barring a bit of shoving at the water table) that nothing bad is going to happen for 6 or 7 minutes. I really appreciate these restful moments, the times when I can let down my guard just a little. It also happens when we get together with another family with a toddler, and the adult/kid ratio bumps up to a pleasing 4:2 (I know this is technically the same as 2:1, but somehow it feels like better odds). Constant vigilance has become such a habit that I barely notice it anymore – it seems that I, like all women, have been genetically hardwired to scan the horizon for Huns and the ground for choking hazards.

But the relief I experience when I feel Gman is momentarily safe is so palpable, so sweet, that it often perversely turns my imagination to disaster fantasies (which I don’t normally indulge in), images of me carrying a limp and bloody Gman through burning streets searching for a doctor, a car, water, anything. And usually at some point in this dreadful fantasy, I stop running and look around to survey my options, and when my vision expands I see all the other women all around me carrying their children – some crying, some strangely still – all the other women who would give anything, do anything, promise anything for the tiniest bit of help. And in my mind’s eye, these women are usually wearing head-coverings and dark concealing clothes, these women are Iraqi.

In March 2003, when the US began its bombing campaign in Baghdad, I was on my way to the EXIT Theatre in San Francisco for the dress rehearsal of a play I was directing called (prophetically) A-A-America. It was 6 months before I would become pregnant with Gman, and thoughts of motherhood were pretty far from my mind – I was much more concerned with my artistic life, with my desire for the show to be good, well-reviewed, successful. At about 4:30pm, I stopped at a store on the corner of Eddy & Taylor to buy some water – a store run by two gentlemen of Arab ethnicity – and they were listening to the radio. One of them told me excitedly that the U.S. was going to start bombing Baghdad at 5pm. He sounded excited, happy even. I have no idea what this event meant to him, but he was glued to his radio, waiting, expectant. I collected my water and walked up the street to the theater, tears silently cascading down my cheeks. When I got to the theater, I picked up a paintbrush and started helping others who were already there touching up the set. Someone spoke to me, probably asked if I was ok, but I couldn’t answer. Because my mind was completely flooded with images of Iraqi women - women sitting quietly in dark houses with their children on their laps waiting – waiting for the planes to come and drop bombs on them – waiting to see whether they and their precious children would live through the night.

I have never been able to shake that image – the image of women holding their children and waiting to see what will drop out of the sky on them. It haunts me and hovers right at the edge of my minds eye every time I hear the word “Iraq.” I truly believe that if all men could spend nine grueling months growing, 44 painful hours birthing, and countless years feeding, teaching, and protecting a child, that war would stop. This is not an inventive idea. What I am saying is obvious, so obvious and clichéd even, that it no longer seems possible to fully embrace the truth of it. But it is true that each brown child I see on the nightly news wrapped in a bloody sheet, cradled in his shattered father’s arms, defiantly playful despite being surrounded by piles of rubble and toxic dirt – each of these children is exactly the same as my curly-headed blonde boy with the lithe body and the saucy eyes. Each one is as precious to his or her parents. Each one is as loved. Each one is grieved for with the same explosive intensity that I would spew into the universe if my son was killed or maimed or harmed in anyway.

Why can’t we remember this?

I download podcasts of NPR programs every week – one that I like is Here & Now (weekly news and culture digest produced in Boston.) This week they reported on a strange Congressional Hearing held in mid-April, which was largely uncovered by the media because of the focus on the Virginia Tech shootings. The topic of the hearing was “Extraordinary Rendition in US Counter-Terrorism Policy and its Impact on Transatlantic Relations.” Rendition is the bloodless name given to the policy of seizing terrorist suspects abroad and then extraditing them for interrogation to countries where torture is permissible. Apparently the US has had a “Rendition Program” in place since 1995 (when Clinton was president.)

I heard part of the testimony of Michael Sawyer – former CIA officer in charge of the Bin Laden unit and the one of the original creators of the Rendition Program – speak about his perspective on people who are mistakenly rendered:

Sawyer: “I don’t care what happens to the people who are targeted and rendered…we wouldn’t be operating against them unless they were enemies to the United States…”

Senator: “What about those who were clearly eventually were determined to be innocent.”

Sawyer: “Mistakes are made sir.”

Senator: “It’s just a mistake.”

Sawyer: “If they’re not American, I really don’t care.”

I was taken aback by his unapologetic bluntness. But my next thought was that he is speaking a plain truth – a truth that most of our political and military leaders agree with overtly and which many Americans probably accept secretly. If they’re not American, I really don’t care. What will it take to melt our hearts? How do we overcome this massive failure of empathy to see that Iraqis, and Afghanis, and Iranians, and Pakistanis, and North Koreans are just like us? They want what we want – to put their children to bed each night and be confident that they can keep their promises – “No sweetheart, there’s nothing scary in the night. The night is the same as the day. You’re safe, baby. Go to sleep.”

Be well.

Labels: Community Muses, Mamahood

BURKAS

One of my big plans this winter was that I would use the blog as my primary form of creative self-expression during the “transition phase” from San Francisco to London. I set it up with my friend Britt in October and eagerly waited until the mountain of moving tasks was completed so I could get back to it. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get reliable internet at my flat (more later on the British Telecom saga and how my 4-week struggle with them may actually be bringing me closer to enlightenment.) Nonetheless, I feel an urge today to “spress myself” as my friend’s 4 year-old niece would say. And so I have come to an internet cafe to kick-start this blogging business for myself and to share some tidbits with anyone who'sinterested in hearing how things are going here in London for me and my crew.

Sometime last week, I recognized a rather subtle shift in my outlook. I now feel like I live here. I rode the bus through the streets of Chiswick this morning – from Gabriel’s preschool to the internet café where I am now – and the route, the landscape, the shops all look familiar now instead of new or foreign. And that is how it happens, quite mysteriously one day you wake up and this is where you are, and you are no longer longing for where you were, or imagining that things might be different. You are content or at least aware of being present in the moment at hand. Previously, I have been obsessed with marking time – we’ve been here 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks – and analyzing how we’re adjusting and if we’re on target (whatever that is) - if we are acing our transition. Will I ever shake this get-a-A-on-the-test mentality? But I lost track of time last week – literally. There were a few days when I didn’t know what day it was or I was at least fuzzy on the date.

Yet, at the same time that I’ve been letting go a bit of the bigger picture, I’ve been focusing a lot of energy on creating routines and rituals in our home. I have NEVER liked routines. I find waking and sleeping and eating at the same time everyday deathly dull and boring. Despite all the sage advice offered by older and wiser friends and every parenting manual in existence that this is exactly the kind of structure young children need, David and I have continued to fudge it, hoping that if we were more spontaneous in our domestic life, we might wind up raising a spontaneous child. This has not been the case. Gabriel, as it turns out, is not flexible at all. My friend Kara has two children who seem ready to roll with the punches through global travel and other adventures. But not our schmubba. He is at his best and most beautiful when we keep things the same. And finally, because I have no good reason not to, I am surrendering to this – to the fact that our family life is smoother, more pleasant and more satisfying when it is bounded by a sense of routine and regularity (spiced of course with occasional surprises.)

It turns out that what this routine yields me is a surprising amount of mental freedom. I no longer have to spend a lot of brain time on figuring out what we will eat (Monday is soup or stew, Wednesday is a roast, Friday is fish for Shabbat, Sunday is Pizza Night and the other days we eat leftovers – no kidding, I’ve got it that organized,) or how we will spend our time (preschool dictates our daily schedule during the week). And so, quite surprisingly, I’ve started actually having the space in my head to think about other things – like why women wear burqs and whether or not my grandfather like the work he did and why Americans as happy with their lives as Europeans seem to be.

This morning on the bus, I saw a woman who was wearing a full burqa – head to toe enveloping black cloth with a very narrow slit for the eyes. She was even wearing black silk gloves, so not even an inch of her skin was visible. This is something I have never seen in San Francisco – even though it is a cosmopolitan city – the Muslim community is either more liberal or the ultra conservative folks don’t choose to live in the city. But here in London, there are huge pockets of immigrants from nearly every country where Islam is the core religion. This woman happened to be carrying a backpack and her shape was large enough to suggest bulk under the burqa – either fat or pregnancy or … I confess, I had a moment of panic where I wondered if she was carrying a bomb. She seemed so incongruous on a commuter bus full of people in modern business dress, and the backpack… a curious choice of bag for her. I briefly wondered if I should get off the bus. But then, I realized that I mostly found her figure threatening because she was so masked – it was impossible to tell anything about her – her age, what she looked like, whether she was smiling or frowning, anything. She was a cryptic black figure – indecipherable and indistinguishable. And after a moment of contemplating this, I got really angry. I believe in freedom of expression. I appreciate that a woman’s choice to wear a headscarf or shave her head for her religion can be a meaningful act of faith – a giving of her beauty to God. But this complete entombment, this erasure of all a woman’s distinctive traits – how can this be perceived as anything except a kind of death? An expression of the absolute power of her male relatives over her very existence. I found myself wanting to connect with this woman somehow. I considered talking to her, but realized that she might not want to talk to me or might find the attempt threatening. Furthermore, there was a strong chance she didn’t speak English. So, I did nothing. At the next stop she got off, a swirl of black, and was gone. What is to be done? Does she agree with this? Do her sisters and her mother and her daughters? Is there any way to know?

Here is what wikipedia has to say about the definition of “burqa”:

A burqa (also burkha, burka or burqua) is an all-enveloping outer garment worn by most Muslim women in Afghanistan, and many in India and Pakistan. It is worn over the usual daily clothing (often a long dress or a salwar kameez) and removed when the woman returns to the sanctuary of the household.

Before the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, it was little worn in cities. During the Taliban's reign, women were required to wear a burqa whenever they appeared in public. Officially it is not required under the present Afghan regime, but local warlords still usually enforce it everywhere outside Kabul.^{[citation needed]} In current unsettled conditions, women who might not otherwise wear the burqa must do so as matter of personal safety.

The full or Afghan burqa covers the wearer's entire face except for a small region about the eyes, which is covered by a concealing net or grille. Pakistani and Indian burkas may expose the face or eyes. It is usually sewn from light materials, and requires many yards/meters of material. Blue is a favourite colour for burqas. The cap from which the material hangs may be decorated with embroidery.

Many Muslims believe that the Islamic scripture, the Qur'an, and the collected traditions, or hadith, require a woman to dress and behave modestly in public. However, this requirement, called hijab, has been interpreted in many different ways by Islamic scholars (ulema) and Muslim communities (see Women in Muslim societies).

The burqa is a prominent symbol of the presence of Islam in Europe, although very few women wear it. It has become a controversial political issue, and some intellectuals and political groups advocate prohibition, for various reasons.

The government of the Netherlands is the first to plan a legal ban on face-covering Islamic clothing, popularly described as the 'burqa ban', although it does not only apply to the Afghan-type burqa. Immigration and Integration minister Rita Verdonk announced the legislation in November 2006. ^[1] In the November 2006 general election, the Party for Freedom won 9 seats: it advocates prohibition of the burqa. In response, a group of Muslim women organised a unique (for Europe) pro-burqa demonstration at the newly elected Dutch parliament in The Hague. ^[2]

Islamic dress for women that covers the face has also been controversial in Britain. A British Cabinet minister, MP Jack Straw, asked Muslim women from his constituency to remove any veils covering their faces during face-to-face meetings with him. He explained to the media that this was a request, not a demand, and that he made sure that a woman staffer remained in the room during the meeting. A media furor followed. Some Muslim groups said that they understood his concerns, and others rejected them as prejudicial to Muslims. [3] It is not clear that any of the affected Muslim constituents were wearing burqas. The Arabian face veil, or niqab, is more common among British Muslims.

That’s all the musing for today. Thanks for reading.

Be well.

Labels: Community Muses