I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry as if sliding the backbone up out of his body, and made a chart of the month and put her temperature on it, rising and falling, to know the day to make me--I would have liked to have been conceived in heat, in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex, not on cardboard, the little x on the rising line that did not fall again. But when a friend was pouring wine and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted, I took the wine against my lips as if my mouth were moving along that valved wall in my mother's body, she was bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then bearing down, pressing me out into the world that was not enough for her without me in it, not the moon, the sun, Orion cartwheeling across the dark, not the earth, the sea--none of it was enough, for her, without me. Sharon Olds

"It is when we all play safe that we 
create a world of the utmost insecurity."
                 --Dag Hammarskjold--Secretary-general UN, 1961
                     In The Traveler's Lost and Found  LESELY HAZLETON
            I heard it said a long time ago, in the days when the Egyptian Book of the Dead was regarded as a kind of tour guide to an acid trip, that on every good trip, something precious is lost. It was said that this was in fact the mark of a good trip, the physical item lost representing a letting go of established forms of self – of status, poses, connections, all manner of possessions.

            And so it has been. On every good trip, no matter where, there is a kind of redistribution of belongings, rather like bees pollinating. The lost item reminds you that travel is a two-way process, a kind of binding of person and place in which the place too will have its say. If a place speaks to you then something of you will be left there. And so the strongest memories are often of tangible things lost, and intangibles gained.

            There are the gold-rimmed glasses I lost as I stood on the brink of a deep wadi in the Judaean Desert on a winter’s day, bracing against a howling wind for safety, when the wind suddenly shifted, whipped the glasses off my face, and bore them off to the bottom of the wadi. Descent was impossible. I drove slowly and near-sightedly back to Jerusalem, taking consolation in the thought of those battered frames around the neck of a Bedouin’s favorite goat. Those glasses were a kind of tribute to the desert’s power, a physical tender of respect for a place where humans tread only with respect and trepidation, never carelessly. The wind had done with my glasses what it might, under worse circumstances, have done with me. I could have resented the loss of those glasses, but why? They had been taken by a force larger and more ineffable than any I could muster. The only graceful response was acquiescence.

            There is the gold earring I left somewhere in the gullies of the giant monolith that was once called Ayers Rock and is now known by its aboriginal name, Uluru, in central Australia. I had decided, out of deference to aboriginal tradition, not to climb the rock. The rock is one of the most sacred aboriginal places, part of the dreamtime, in which the history of the movements and adventures of ancestral beings is writ large in the physical landscape. Would you want tourists climbing all over the faces of your ancestors?

            So I slowly explored around the base of the rock, all nine kilometers of it, arriving back at my starting point at midday with the temperature at 110 degrees Fahrenheit and rising. There, I sought precious inches of shade in the lee of a small van. “Look,” said its owner, pointing up the rock. “Those people dropped their jerrycan of water a while back. I wonder why they don’t come down.”

            I looked up to see a mother and child clearly stuck halfway up. I filled my canteen, and despite my misgivings, started up the rock toward the mother and child. The surface stung my hands as I climbed, and my sneakers slid on the sun-burnished rock. When I finally reached them, I lifted the canteen over my shoulders to offer them water, and in so doing, lifted the earring out of my ear. The three of us froze, listening to the forlorn tinkle of it bouncing over the burning rock. It was irreplaceable, a one-time copy of an ancient Egyptian earring. I knew then for sure that the aboriginals were right, and that climbing this rock was wrong. The earring was another small sacrifice to wisdom. Another token of respect.

            Wisdom and respect never come easy. There is always some loss involved, some surrender of something previously held and treasured. This is harder to accept since loss has an undeservedly bad reputation. “Get lost,” “losing your head,” “lost to the world,” “a dead loss”: the whole idea is demonized. But whether you lose things or your way or yourself – or all three – loss touches the very essence of travel. It is part of what distinguishes the tourist from the traveler. Loss reminds us that travel is – once was and can be again – adventure. And adventure is by its very nature unpredictable.

            A tourist fears loss, clinging to the sense of self in even the strangest circumstances. A traveler values it, knowing that loss can cast you free. You drift in circumstance, vulnerable to the place and the time. A stranger in a strange land, you lose grasp of who you are, and with luck – with serendipity – discover a deeper sense of self.

            This serendipity of loss is easier said than done, of course. And it defies intention. Loss, by definition is accidental, a matter of chance. Yet as chaos theory teaches us, chance is not always random.

            “Luck happens to those who are ready for it,” an old and wise friend once said. Serendipity too. To those who are ready to accept it. Those who are ready to give some part of themselves over to a place, so that the place can give some part of itself over to them.

            If I look back, I see a whole web of special places bound by small things revolving in a cycle of ownership and loss, redistributing themselves around the planet: a blue Gitane T-shirt, its gypsy woman dancing against the smoke of that most French of cigarettes, which I’d talked off the back of a German yachtsman late at night in a taverna on a Greek island and later left behind on a secluded jade-strewn beach near Big Sur; a slingshot proudly won in a contest with a Bedouin boy in the Sinai and then forgotten somewhere on one of the long, desolate beaches of the west coast of Ireland, and a host of other little bits of me that now inhabit odd corners of the world, as those odd corners of the world now inhabit me.

            Perhaps the Egyptian Book of the Dead was right. Loss gives us a sense of some force larger than us, something over which we have no control, that demands its token, its small sacrifice, as the price of entry into beauty and experience and memory.

            After all, what did that earring at Uluru, those glasses in the Judaean desert, really mean? They were tokens taken by the places. Reminders that no matter how much we plan, no matter how well, travel is still unpredictable, still a challenge to our sense of self. Still, thank God, an opening up to the powers of chance, to the powers of the place, to our own sense of awe and wonder.
____________________________________________________
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"Life has a way of keeping things in balance;  
Just when someone great sees you as small,
there’s always someone even greater 
who sees you as great."  
                          --Dr. G Marby
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 

Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. Kindness of wooed and wooer Seems shame to their love pure. O Love, your eyes lose lure When I behold eyes blinded in my stead! Your slender attitude Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed Rolling and rolling there Where God seems not to care; Till the fierce Love they bear Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude. Your voice sings not so soft, Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft Your dear voice is not dear, Gentle, and evening clear, As theirs whom none now hear Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed. Heart, you were never hot, Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot; And though your hand be pale, Paler are all which trail Your cross through flame and hail: Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. Wilfred Owen ----> <----

I Love it When

Give All to Love _

GIVE all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit, and the Muse,--
Nothing refuse.
'Tis a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But it is a God,
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.
It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,--
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,--
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture's hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods survive.: -----Ralf Waldo Emerson

My Sixth Christmas

That fall, before it was discovered that the soles of both my shoes were worn clear through, I still went to Sunday school. And one time the Sunday-school superintendent made a speech to all the classes. He said that these were hard times, and that many poor children weren’t getting enough to eat. It was the first that I had heard about it. He asked everybody to bring some food for the poor children next Sunday. I felt very sorry for the poor children.

Also, little envelopes were distributed to all the classes. Each little boy and girl was to bring money for the poor, next Sunday. The pretty Sunday-school teacher explained that we were to write our names, or have our parents write them, up in the left-hand corner of the little envelopes….I told my mother all about it when I came home. And my mother gave me, the next Sunday, a small bag of potatoes to carry to Sunday school. I supposed the poor children’s mothers would make potato soup out of them….Potato soup was good, My father, who was quite a joker, would always say, as if he were surprised, :Ah! I see we have some nourishing potato soup today!” It was so good that we had it every day. My father was at home all day long and every day, now; and I liked that, even if he was grumpy as he sat reading Grant’s “Memoirs.” I had my parents all to myself, too; the others were away. My oldest brother was in Quincy, and memory does not reveal where the others were: perhaps with relatives in the country.

Taking my small bag of potatoes to Sunday school, I looked around for the poor children; I was disappointed not to see them. I had heard about poor children in stories. But I was told just to put my contribution with the others on the big table in the side room.

I had brought with me the little yellow envelope, with some money in it for the poor children. My mother had put the money in it and sealed it up. She wouldn’t tell me how much money she had put in it, but it felt like several dimes. Only she wouldn’t let me write my name on the envelope. I had learned to write my name, and I was proud of being able to do it. But my mother said firmly, no, I must not write my name on the envelope; she didn’t tell me why. On the way to Sunday school I had pressed the envelope against the coins until I could tell what they were; they weren’t dimes but pennies.

When I handed in my envelope, my Sunday-school teacher noticed that my name wasn’t on it, and she gave me a pencil; I could write my own name, she said. So I did. But I was confused because my mother had said not to; and when I came home, I confessed what I had done. She looked distressed. “I told you not to!” she said. But she didn’t explain why….

I didn’t go back to school that fall. My mother said it was because I was sick. I did have a cold the week that school opened; I had been playing in the gutters and had got my feet wet, because there were holes in my shoes. My father cut insoles out of cardboard, and I wore those in my shoes. As long as I had to stay in the house anyway, they were all right.

I stayed cooped up in the house, without any companionship. We didn’t take a Sunday paper any more, but the Barry Adage came every week in the mails; and though I did not read small print, I could see the Santa Clauses and holly wreaths in the advertisement.

There was a calendar in the kitchen. The red days were Sundays and holidays; and that red 25 was Christmas. (it was on a Monday, and the two red figures would come right together in 1893; but this represents research in the World Almanac, not memory.) I knew when Sunday was, because I could look out of the window and see the neighbor’s children, all dressed up, going to Sunday school. I knew just when Christmas was going to be.

But there was something queer! My father and mother didn’t say a word about Christmas. And once, when I spoke of it, there was a strange, embarrassed silence; so I didn’t say anything more about it. But I wondered, and was troubled. Why didn’t they say anything about it? Was what I had said I wanted (memory refuses to supply that detail) too expensive?

I wasn’t arrogant and talkative now. I was silent and frightened. What was the matter? Why didn’t my father and mother say anything about Christmas? As the day approached, my chest grew tighter with anxiety.

Now it was the day before Christmas. I couldn’t be mistaken. But not a word about it from my father and mother. I waited in painful bewilderment all day. I had supper with them, and was allowed to sit up for an hour. I was waiting for them to say something. “It’s time for you to go to bed,” my mother said gently. I had to say something.

“This is Christmas Eve, isn’t it? I asked, as if I didn’t know.

My father and mother looked at one another. Then my mother looked away. Her face was pale and stony. My father cleared his throat, and his face took on a joking look. He pretended he hadn’t known it was Christmas Eve, because he hadn’t been reading the papers. He said he would go downtown and find out.

My mother got up and walked out of the room. I didn’t want my father to have to keep on being funny about it, so I got up and went to bed. I went by myself without having a light. I undressed in the dark and crawled into bed.

I was numb. As if I had been hit by something. It was hard to breathe. I ached all through. I was stunned – with finding out the truth.

My body knew before my mind quite did. In a minute, when I could think, my mind would know. And as the pain in my body ebbed, the pain in my mind began. I knew. I couldn’t put it into words yet. But I knew why I had taken only a little bag of potatoes to Sunday school that fall. I knew why there had been only pennies in my little yellow envelope. I knew why I hadn’t gone to school that fall – why I hadn’t any new shoes – why we had been living on potato soup all winter. All these things, and others, many others, fitted themselves together in my mind, and meant something.

Then the words came into my mind and I whispered them into the darkness:

“We’re poor!”

That was it. I was one of those poor children I had been sorry for, when I heard about them in Sunday school. My mother hadn’t told me. My father was out of work, and we hadn’t any money. That was why there wasn’t going to be any Christmas at our house.

Then I remembered something that made me squirm with shame – a boast. (Memory will not yield this up. Had I said to some Nice little boy, “I’m going to be President of the United States”/ Or to a Nice little girl: “I’ll marry you when I grow up”? It was some boast as horribly shameful to remember.)

“We’re poor.” There in bed in the dark, I whispered it over and over to myself. I was making myself get used to it. (Or- just torturing myself, as one presses the tongue against a sore tooth? No, memory says not like that – but to keep myself from ever being such a fool again: suffering now, to keep this awful thing from ever happening again. Memory is clear on that; it was more like pulling the tooth, to get it over with – never mind the pain, this will be the end!)

It wasn’t so bad, now that I knew. I just hadn’t known! I had thought all sorts of foolish things: that I was going to Ann Arbor – going to be a lawyer – going to make speeches in the Square, going to be President. Now I knew better.
I had wanted (something) for Christmas. I didn’t want it, now. I didn’t want anything.

I lay there in the dark, feeling the cold emotion of renunciation. (The tendrils of desire unfold their clasp on the outer world of objects, withdraw, shrivel up. Wishes shrivel up, turn black, die. It is like that.)

It hurt. But nothing would ever hurt again. I would never let myself want anteing again.

I lay ther stretched out straight and stiff in the dark, my fists clenched hard upon Nothing….
In the morning it had been like a nightmare that is not clearly remembered – that one wishes to forget. Though I hadn’t hung up any stocking, there was one hanging at the foot of my bed. A bag of popcorn, and a lead pencil, for me. They had done the best they could; now they realized that I knew about Christmas. But they needn’t have thought they had to. I didn’t want anything.

-- Floyd Dell
(Subject and Structure, an Anthology for Writers, fifth edition, 1988)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

~ Joan Didion (1935—

***********************************************************************************************

Cinderella:

You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.

Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.

As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don't heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.

At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.

Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.

	        Anne Sexton		
	      
 also:  http://www.anne-sexton.net/

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

And The Men want back in: all the Dougs and the Michaels, the Darnells, the Erics and Josés, they're standing by the off-ramp of the interstate holding up cardboard signs that say WILL WORK FOR RELATIONSHIP.

Their love-mobiles are rusty. Their Shaggin' Wagons are up on cinderblocks. They're reading self-help books and practicing abstinence, taking out Personals ads that say           "Good listener would like to meet lesbian ladies,                                        for purposes of friendship only." In short, they've changed their minds, the men: they want another shot at the collaborative enterprise. Want to do fifty-fifty housework and childcare; They want commitment renewal weekends and couples therapy. Because being a man was finally too sad— In spite of the perks, the lifetime membership benefits. And it got old, telling the joke about the hooker and the priest at the company barbeque, praising the vintage of the beer and            punching the shoulders of a bud                 in a little overflow of homosocial bonhomie— Always holding the fear inside                          like a tipsy glass of water—

Now they're ready to talk, really talk about their feelings, in fact they're ready to make you sick with revelations of                          their vulnerability— A pool of testosterone is spreading from around their feet, it's draining out of them like radiator fluid, like history, like an experiment that failed.

So here they come on their hands and knees, the men: Here they come. They're really beaten. No tricks this time.                 No fine print. Please, they're begging you. Look out.

In Memory of Radio

Give All to Love __

My Sixth Christmas