Crack It Open, Mother Bird

Ya, so. The whole thing with the mastitis. I'm convinced this part of me that needs to give is massively frustrated. My kids are grownish -- certainly at the stage where they don't allow a lot of overt mothering. Especially Scorpio II, who needs it badly, and will absolutely not admit that she needs it. But I feel it every day, how much she needs me and won't let me give to her. Scorpio I, a little better. He will accept some mothering, if I use the correct strategy. But then again, I am trying to launch him off on his own (he is 22, after all), and don't want to over do it. Plus, too much mommy behavior and he gets self-conscious, needs to assert his maturity. This is all "normal" and fine. But I feel their pull, perpetually, and the sadness of their leaving, like the bottom dropping out, at least in some manner, from the nest of my heart.

Metal Ox, he won't accept a lot of nurturing, either. I mean, he's a metal ox. He thinks he's got it all under control. He won't even let me rub his feet. The most I can do is take him soup -- which he says he doesn't need but I bring anyway --tell him he's a sweetheart and a big strong magnificent. Still, I always wish I could give him more.

My mom and grandpa. Too far away. Can't live in my home town, no I can't. Deadly depressing. Send them love through the air. Go when I can.

Everyone Else. The walls of the world are cracking. Too much violence, lies, poverty, slavery. Or is it consiousness trying to emerge? Either way, there is still the suffering, which seems, at these extremes, grossly unnecessary. One feels wildly impotent, to use exactly the wrong word for a discussion of breast frustration and cracking walls. It's not penetration of the problem that's called for -- it's a cradling, a warmth. So much need, and here I am making fancy airplanes for rich people. Facilitating all sorts of crushing nitrogen debt.

And the doves! They launched their first round of fledglings, then came back and laid a second clutch of eggs. Then, the day after I found out that the actual lumps in my breast are from all appearances benign, the parent doves were gone! As if they'd left the night before, abandoning their two perfect white eggs, snowy little breasts of things, in their nest on my window sill. Why? Has one of them been killed? Did the eggs die? This is so sad! Should I have brought them in and tried to incubate them?

So really, I do think that my desire to give has finally outstripped my ability to thoroughly that my breasts simply swelled up with the imperative. Add to this what I discovered about Xanax: it suppresses dopamine; dopamine suppresses prolactin. Guess what too much prolactin in a breast with no baby can do? So, though my taking of the Xanax was certainly not a daily thing (and yes, it was prescribed to me by my doc!), it's possible that this was a contributing factor! The combination of too much prolactin and too few roads to the expression of my motherly and human urges to give, and WHAM! Clogged milk ducts. Fever, swelling, pain.

This is not to say that I'm Ms. All-Giving-Mother-Earth-Woman. I'm not. I often want to be given to, as well. But lately I've been thinking that even some of that is its opposite. Or, feeling better cared for of late, I can see through to the other, deeper thing, maybe?

Still, I'm convinced that the solution is not to shut down, but to open up even further. Just keep opening up. Letting love replace fear. Sitting in the stillness. Believing that really helps everyone else. Does it? It's hard. The world is either crumbling or hatching. We'll see what emerges.

New: Writer Searching for Meaningful Employment

Darn. Cancer scare. Don't really want to write about it right now (is this a postmodern moment?). All is well, though! Seriously, I think I'm going to live to be 100. And in the mean time, I want to find a job with a non-profit, or a foundation. Something. New feeling of not wanting to waste my life sitting in this cube doing nothing of any lasting value whatsoever. Not an entirely new feeling. Intensification of a feeling I've been having for years. But the kids are mostly raised up and now I can be selfish and work to help people instead of just put bread on the table, maybe. From time to time I scour the online job postings at non-profits, publishing houses, etc. Haven't turned up much yet. If I were a grant writer... how hard is grant writing, anyway? Maybe I should take a course. There are lots of great sounding jobs for grant writers, all over the place. It has to be more meaty than, well, what I'm doing now, which is like trying to live on chicken bones. Or if I had the personality to go to NYC and lead a publication team. Not. In that job I would be the chicken bones. I need a quiet little job, a brainy, researchy, I'm-going-to-fix-this-part-of-the-world-with-my-incredible-writing job. A shy, English major person's job. I wonder if the Southern Poverty Law Center would take me? I love their work, of course. But then, that's in Alabama. Honestly, though, I saw literally nothing in the STL area. Nothing. Nada. Not at all. A job has to open up in my town and then it has to come and get me! Is anybody out there? I'm here! I'm full of passion and vinegar and lots and lots of words!

Stupid White Lady

Last Friday I interviewed for an artist in residence gig in the St. Louis public schools. I would go in as a poet. It would be awesome. I would inspire the kids and inject color into the dowdy world of public ed in which they’re trapped. Fourth and fifth graders. The littlest ones. The ones who maybe still have a chance?

My idea was to have them write through their experiences of food. Learn sensory description, metaphor, through a subject they can, well, already sink their teeth into. We would explore cultures through cuisine, learn tolerance through looking at how others eat, -- even the “others” in the classrooms with us. Et cetera. I had measures in place for all sorts of negative sides – I’d thought of people having to work so hard that they couldn’t make dinner so the kids were on their own; I thought of a poverty that might limit meals to what comes from the food pantry, or the cheap, deadly diet of the (growing) American poor: lots of refined starches (white bread, fake macaroni and cheese, noodles, hot dogs, sugar). And there is always the kid whose parents are too stoned to care, no matter where you go. I kept all of that in mind.

Five minutes into my pitch the nice woman interviewer stopped me:

“Margaret,” she said, looking immensely pained and apologetic, “I hate to stop you, but….” and she went on to explain that fully 10 percent of the children in our City schools are homeless, and a far larger percent are getting probably their one meal a day from the subsidized lunch program. “A lot of their experiences with food are not good.”

Ten percent? What? How in the hell can that be? What in God’s name are we doing? Are we insane? And where are these children? Why can’t I see them? If they were visible, would we feed them? What kind of place is this, anyway, where we spend money on useless wars and give the wealthy and corporations immense tax breaks while we let little children go hungry??????

I instantly realized that I could not do such a program unless I could afford to feed these kids every time I held class. Which, of course and unfortunately, I cannot even begin to do. Which is a shame, because I still think that the pain they have around food needs addressed, acknowledged, given a light to heal under. But you just can’t ask hungry people to sit around thinking about food!

Ok, so I left crying, feeling like the dumb white lady. The woman I interviewed with couldn’t have been more gracious about it. I felt like a schmuck. I went home and got in bed, let myself sob for all the abandoned (and I mean by us, not just by their parents) children in the world, and for the mothers who have to watch those babies go hungry. All over the world? Yes. And right in my neighborhood. These hungry babies within steps of my door? They are less visible to me than those so very far away.

The next day I came down with a raging mastitis. Seriously. Driving home on the rainy highway after a lovely wedding celebration in the Missouri hills, my left breast just started throbbing. I went home, took off the Angel push-up bra, put on a soft self-bra-ed tank and, well, within a couple of hours I couldn’t even handle having that on, it was so tight on that breast. Finally getting the bright idea to look in the mirror I saw these odd tracings of bright red coming out of my aereola. By Sunday afternoon the underside of that breast, toward my armpit, was red, too, and hot, and soar.

It’s been 15 years since I nursed a baby, and I didn’t even get a full-blown breast infection then. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think that my spirit is rebelling against this idea of all these children I cannot feed.

And my own daughter, too far away.

But the knowledge of the 10 plus the 25-40 percent equals a way too high percentage of hungry children in my town? This is just too much. It’s just too damn much. Where is this that I live? What country is this? Who runs this joint? What do we believe in? Who do I talk to? And where are the TV cameras? And where is the mayor? It’s not like I’m an innocent! I’ve been fighting these fights my whole life! How could I not have known this? Why does my heart not just give up? Mr. President, I know these babies have to say it, Mr. President, why won’t you help us? Really, what do these children think at night as they fall asleep? How alone can a person feel before the only option is to turn to stone? Remember, you mothers, the feeling of milk letting down? Flooding into your nipples, blasting forth at the very thought or cry of your hungry baby? My breasts, my old and empty breasts, both of them, ache like widowed hounds with these thoughts.

"Whore" Is Not Synonymous with "Woman"

Regarding Imus. First, about First Amendment issues. Here's a concise treatment of the general legal question, by the Princess from her blog:

On The View this morning, I was listening to four women talk over each other and get the point about freedom of speech completely wrong. The First Amendment prevents the Government from censoring speech. Not corporations, not fans, not consumers, not your neighbors. You can be booed off-stage. You can be fired should your speech tarnish or endanger the reputation and the profit margin of the corporation for which you work. Lots of kinds of speech are proscribed: threats of violence, fraud, perjury, liable, defamation, verbal/emotional abuse, sexual harassment, and cetera. These kinds of speech are actionable. You might say anything you want, but to imagine that speech does not or should not have public and communal and legal consequences is childish and silly. http://kalidharmashaktidharma.blogspot.com/

So, let's not conflate rudeness with freedom. Now, that said, I don’t want to tolerate a lot of crap on the airwaves, but I don’t think that Don Imus is the King of the Demons of racism and misogyny. We need to look deeper, into the movement of culture that has allowed the release of the memes that make the interchange of the words “woman” and “whore” mundane.

I am looking for a world where no one is called by that name. Indeed, I am looking for a world wherein no woman ever has to be treated so lowly that she must either be called by that name, or practice that profession. If I were a black woman I would be sorely pissed. I am pissed enough as it is. The way black women are portrayed by some black men is awful. And, yes, the way they portray themselves or allow themselves to be portrayed. But that is the point. These kinds of words and attitudes and abuses wouldn't be as harmful if they didn't affect the people they describe or attack. Verbal abuse takes a deep toll on a person's self-concept. Enough conflating of woman and whore has a catastrophic affect on women's and girls' self-concepts. Such a deep affect that some of us end demeaning ourselves in videos or clubs or on the street or with our men or with cutting or drugging or dangerous sex because we can no longer see that what we are doing demeans us. We've been conditioned to see those insults as either true or harmless, but all the while the self-concept is falling and the damage is being done.

So stop it! No more calling women ho! First, let's get the very idea out of our minds. Then, let's create a world where there is enough economic opportunity that women don't need to hook, enough true respect for women that they don't lose themselves to themselves so completely that they want to sell themselves to icky men, and enough true respect for women that no man will want to use a woman that way. Without the demand there is no market! That is the world we must create. A world where women are not objects to be bought and sold. The normalization of the word "ho" into the language is only a symptom of a growing attitude that it's perfectly fine to buy and sell women for profit. Just stop it. Now. We are not for sale.

All one needs to do is to spend an hour on MTV or VH1 and my point will be clear. And that portrayal of black women bleeds over to all women. And “entertainment” is no excuse!

There is too much low and disrespectful discourse circulating at present. It’s good we’re talking about it. Otherwise, all the sudden my daughter doesn’t even blink when her boyfriend calls her “ho” in fun, and this combines with the egregious propaganda that stripping is empowering for women (if you think that, ask yourself how happy you’d be if your daughter were doing it) and that “sex work” is no more damaging to a woman than waitressing. Anyone who calls women by those names or promotes in any way those means of earning money is guilty of harming and of demeaning women. Period. And keep in mind – what Imus said, as Clarence Page (black Chicago Trib columnist) said on Diane Rehm’s show this morning, is nothing compared to what we hear from Snoop Dog or on some hip-hop radio stations generally. Don’t believe me? Give it a listen. My God. I’m not going to be such a pansy white liberal that I refuse to hold anyone of color accountable for this "ho" phenomenon.

It does seem that humans have to grab a scapegoat in order to change a cultural movement. Not that Imus isn’t guilty. Clearly he his. And I wish the country didn’t think people like him (and Rush, and Ann Coulter, and Howard Stern, and that Simon guy on Idol, and rude people generally...) were entertaining. We seem to think that "telling the truth" means being horribly rude. But it doesn't. The Truth is never rude, doesn't need to be rude. It might be painful, but it is never rude. Truth is the mother of Love, is part of the fabric of everything, right along with carbon. The Truth that underlies Imus's comment has more to do with his fear of those athletic Rutgers women than it does the words that came out of his mouth. The next time you hear someone be really rude, resist the temptation to think, "Well, at least s/he's telling the truth." S/he is not. The rudeness is a symptom of something else, some other pain or anger or fear. The rudeness is the drug that person is using to avoid the truth.

The market is taking care of Imus. He will probably move, like Stern did, to satellite radio where he won’t be regulated by the FCC or catch hell and can tap into another market. Entertainers who wish to degrade women and make racist speech (even against themselves) will sell as many CDs as people want to buy. For the rest of us, this is an opportunity to look inward. My hope is that when we do, we see that we don’t want to buy those CDs any more.

Can we just be kind to one another? Can we please just not think of women as objects for sale? And the term “nappy headed” should have left the language a long freaking time ago. I mean really.

Ohmygod the bees

"For many entomologists, the bee crisis is a wake-up call. By relying on a single species for pollination, US agriculture has put itself in a precarious position, they say. A resilient agricultural system requires diverse pollinators. This speaks to a larger conservation issue. Some evidence indicates a decline in the estimated 4,500 potential alternate pollinators – native species of butterflies, wasps. and other bees. The blame for that sits squarely on human activity – habitat loss, pesticide use, and imported disease – but much of this could be offset by different land-use practices." -- Moises Velasquez-Manoff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

It is very frightening that the bees have disappeared. I hate to say something this dire, but this could be a harbinger of real environmental collapse. Let’s hope it’s not. Let’s hope it’s a wake-up call. Global warming isn’t the only proof that “the environmentalists,” those demonized liberal tree-hugging hippie freaks, have simply been telling the truth all these many years:

Nothing can be abused indefinitely and survive. Not even this Earth.

And by “survive” I mean survive intact; a burned out and uninhabitable shell does not count.

Haven’t heard about the bees? Look here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0404/p13s01-sten.html

And here:
http://www.glrc.org/story.php3?story_id=3366

Or better yet, just google “disappearing bees.”

How many years have I been preaching the idiocy of widespread pesticide use? The risks of monoculture? The importance of biodiversity? At least 20?

And how many times have I tried to explain that bees and wasps and other creatures are necessary for human survival, in response to some friend or acquaintance’s assertion that he or she “hated” bugs and didn’t see the use of them, so what was the harm of killing them off. And yet I see people spraying Raid in their kitchens, putting Roundup in their gardens, thinking that because it doesn’t contain DDT it’s safe! Even grown hippies do this! People who should know better. It defies logic. Really.

Forgetting the amazement I always feel when I run into otherwise educated persons who are nonetheless clueless about the crazy spectrum of deep and lasting harm -- from cancers to ecosystem damage -- that pesticides cause… Well, never mind that. I can’t possibly forget about that. I really, truly do not understand how it is that people cannot see that killing off the native bugs will ruin everything. That the balance of life is delicate. That what’s poison to bugs is poison to us. And if it’s not a pesticide phenom, I guarantee you it’s related, some imbalance, so moving ahead of a another inspect or fungus or something because we’ve killed down it’s predator or the winters aren’t cold enough to kill off something.

The evidence is everywhere to be had. This discussion has been going on since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring 45 years ago. Studies are released continually on the matter. Perhaps the ignorance it’s partly due, as with the global warming issue, to business and its government allies efforts to place doubt in the public mind. But even this is nuts, because if we kill the ecosystem and can’t farm then how are those who make their living off agriculture going to keep turning a buck?

And, ya, like, without pollinators there aren’t crops, you know?

My God. The bees? The bees are disappearing?

Harbingers: Little Blossoms of News

Newsiness.

Bird Report: The dove nesting in my dining room window now has one chick, that I can see. There may be more under her.

Garden Report: Peas! The peas are up in my garden! So is the spinach and rainbow chard, but the peas are cutest. And the hardest to get fresh (I read somewhere that if you don’t cook fresh peas within 24 hours of picking they’ll get starchy and lose their sweetness). Something has eaten all of the one little collard plant that lives on the southeast corner of the plot, but has not touched any of the other collards. Now there’s a low IQ bunny or caterpillar. Or a considerate one?

Flower Report: Lilacs! Some on my desk at work, some on the dining room table at home.

Game Report: Baseball, opening day! My first ever. Metal Ox’s first ever. (I just realized, this means we did get to lose our virginity together-- in a sense -- after all.) Metal Ox was so sweet. He told me about a couple he saw on TV who were going to their 50th (I may have the number wrong) opening day together, and how one day maybe we could say the same thing. And he bought each of us opening day banners and opening day balls. And, God bless his little heart, he bought me one of those crazily expensive Cardinals scorebooks! It doesn’t even matter to me that we lost the game to the Mets 'cause it was all so fun and sweet. And tonight – it’s World Series ring giveaway. Now there’s a (potential) once-in-a-lifetime thingy.

Meeting the Parents Report: It’s always a trip to meet a friend’s parental unit(s). On Friday The Princess (I’m back to calling you The P, my dear, because what with the M.H. Duchess’ picture living here now, to call you by The D might get confusing) brought her Mère to see the Pre-Raphaelites with us, then on to dinner. Delightful! We had a lovely time. And she even had something sensible to say about my soufflé project: Clean your oven.

And Now for The Bad News Report: Scorpio I is having the ocular histoplasmosis symptoms again. He sees the retina doc today. I can tell he is quite disturbed by this development. We were all hoping that the Avastin treatment had taken care of it once and for all. The implications of this reoccurrence are rather far-reaching. So, please, if you can, help him out with your positive thoughts and prayers for the health of his eye.