Ah, SPRING!

As I became conscious after a satisfying night's sleep, I realized the sound I heard was birds singing -- or calling for mates -- possibly from the still nude forsythia bush just beyond the window. Spring is here although it's still chilly and not yet green outside. A wonderful way to start a day!

Last evening I read an article saying the only truly quiet place in America is in a wilderness in Oregon but that is not silent. The author meant quiet as being without man made sounds. In what he called the "last square inch" of quiet, birdsong mixed with raindrops on leaves, wind rustling leaves, and running water nearby. I believe that is hyperbole, that there are equally quiet places say in the Maine woods, the heart of the Adirondacks, many places in the Rocky Mountains, far from roads, not on airline flight patterns. But hype to make a point is the American way.

My birdsong can be easily canceled by the fans on the forced air blower that heats my apartment. I have lots of other man made noise as do most people: the refrigerator, the people upstairs walking around, water in pipes, my shower and toilet -- and those above me -- and all the appliances, vacuum, dish washer, microwave, telephone, hair drier, etc. Plus nearby is a stop light so I get not only vehicles from intersecting streets but the frequent sirens of police, ambulance and fire department. Happily I have no neighbors who play loud music or television. I have whole days when I don't feel like turning on my radio even though it's set to a classical music station.

The article emphasized how bad the ambient noise is for us both psychically and physiologically. Yes, I believe young people who listen to loud music on earphones [or buds as they now are sized and called] may be doing damage to their hearing. And I believe constant noise interferes with our concentration and serenity. I don't think this is such a new phenomenon although surely motorcycles and sonic booms, sirens and helicopters are more damaging than say the wooden and steel rimmed wheels and metal shoed clip-clop of horses drawing carriages, carts and wagons over cobbled streets in cites of the past. That kind of noise goes back to at least Roman times, maybe even ancient Egyptian times when chariots were first used. We are a noisy species. I find it sad that many, especially young people, seem afraid of quiet. Truly you cannot "hear yourself think" if your mind must mutltitask by filtering out the ambient sounds to make room for your thoughts.

Watching the Brain Work

Links to TED TALKs are sent to me by friends every so often. Most are interesting, only a few have disappointed. The most dynamic one I have ever heard was sent to me last week by a woman in my writing class which I call "Writing with the whole brain." I am interested in how the brain works and have read a great deal in neurology and psychology. Also I've read a lot about what science is learning from the advanced Tibetan lama meditators who are seeking to control their brains so that they can enter a state of bliss at will and remain there as long as they choose.

This TED TALK by a woman neurologist who watched her brain divide is functions as she was having a massive stroke, is the most dynamic and thought provoking of the TED talks I've heard so far. Perhaps the stroke itself prevented her from acting rationally and seeking immediate help when she had an unusual headache, or she simply did not realize she needed help. She actually spent about four hours watching the ways her right and left hemisphere's perceived what was happening. When the logical side was entirely blanked out, she entered states of bliss - "Nivana" was her word - that I believe meditators work long years to achieve. They learn to move into that state at will and stay there as long as they wish -- or so I understand from what I've read.

The woman's experience affirms that the state of bliss is not supernatural, not bestowed by reaching some godhood, but a state that exist in the normal human brain although it is not accessible under normal circumstances. Yet, I think many, if not most, people have had moments of that bliss -- powerful moments sometimes occasioned by specific circumstances [perhaps like the so called runner's high] when brain chemistry triggers a kind of concentration that is not usual in every day life. I have experienced this strongly and at length at least three times, and more fleetingly several times. I do not think I am unusual in this way, although I may have looked at the experience more questioningly and been less inclined to attribute it to spiritual practice than others might. I have never experimented with mind altering drugs -- that is another area of inquiry and discovery.

I think science has only begun to understand the human brain but I'm happy they are trying and beginning to have tools with which to measure. I am discouraged that so many who are inquiring into these phenomena seem blindered to others who are looking at the same phenomena from other disciplines. Although segmented into right and left, ancient and "modern" and physiologically distinct areas, the brain is a whole and should finally be seen as one organ with many parts that interact.

Hey, you never know.

On his way out the door to return to college after spring break, Noah's mother called to him, "Don't forget your box of matzoh." 180 degree turn, Noah went into the kitchen for his box of the Passover "unlevened bread" and headed out to meet his ride. So what? Before Noah was born his parents, one Jewish, one with no specific religious background, became born again evangelical Christians. Their church is still the lynchpin of their social and intellectual lives. So why is his mother sending him off with a box of matzoh? Why was it that a couple of days ago when I stopped at her house to pick up something she was making matzoh brei for lunch and told me of shopping a bit out of her way because she had a coupon for a dozen boxes of matzoh. [FYI: matzoh brei is a concoction of broken up matzoah and eggs. A bit like french toast, often eaten with butter and cinnamon or even maple syrup.]

As Noah's grandmother, yes, it was I who introduced this part of the family to matzoah brie, many long years ago although it was certainly my Jewish husband who inspired the whole thing. At Noah's age, I was almost entirely unconscious of all Jewish customs and had never tasted the peculiar flavor of matzoh. In truth, I did not grow fond of it and have long since moved into other phases of my life that include no Jewish rituals at all -- nor any Christian ones either.

What is the moral of this story: It's simply Hey, you never know what's going to be an influence. Yesterday afternoon was a birthday celebration. Akitchen conversation turned to the changing eye and hair colors of the children in the family. We older generation understand dominant and recessive genes but the conclusion about what the babies were going to look like concluded, Hey, you never know.

Forgotten Women

Women writers' novellas is the subject of a course I am taking. The anthology we are using begins with some almost forgotten women -- or rather women forgotten until the women's studies became a part of many college's curricula. We have read authors I had not read before: Rebecca Harding Davis, Kate Chopin and, this week, Nella Larsen whose name was utterly unknown to me. (We also have read Gertrude Stein and Edith Wharton who have received attention continuously and the ones we will read during the remainder of the semester are more modern and more well known). Nella Larsen, in the photo above, was this week's writer. Her story Quicksand was judged by most in the class to be unsuccessful. I believed her character until the final section, many others in the class felt the same way. Apparently after this novella she stopped writing during the last 23 or so years of her life. We know that Kate Chopin also stopped writing at an early age.

I wonder did they really stop writing or did they stop trying to publish? Did manuscripts eventually become tinder for a fire? Nella Larson was a woman of mixed background, half black, half white, she wrote about trying to find her identity and being true to it. Kate Chopin wrote about seeking freedom of expression in a restrictive society. We have no idea how many women writers were never recognized. They may have published here and there in local newspapers, poems in this or that weekly publication, short stories in small magazines. Maybe many of them were not very successful. Maybe they weren't even very good. But we know, because historical societies have sought them out, that many women pioneers, homesteaders, wagon trainers, kept diaries that have become precious historical documents.

Until the women's movement of the mid-20th century women writers were more apt to disappear than be remembered unless they were lucky enough to play in "the big boys' club", as did Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, and a few others. Being taken seriously was especially difficult for black women -- and still is. Yes, we have Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, and a handful of others. But I spoke to two knowledgeable women after the class yesterday and asked if they had ever heard of the playwright Adrienne Kennedy. No. She was a neighbor of mine and a friend in New York. The first black woman playwright to win not one but two Obies. Her work is well known in black studies but black studies is an invisible area doubled compared to women's studies which is semi-invisible to the great male establishment that still defines American literature. Being a woman is hard in the arts; being a black woman is harder.

We have just finished black history month and are moving into women's history month. Then comes April which is poetry month. Some groups have lobbied for recognition in some way -- but, in practice they are barely recognized at all.

A beautiful age

The Style section in today's NYTimes had an article about cosmetic companies at last picturing women who are mature in their advertisements. The article specifically talked about Diane Keaton and Ellen Degeneris. We think often of beautiful actresses who are not just over 50 but over 60, like Judi Dench and the incredible Sophia Loren. We just saw Meryl Streep and Glenn Close looking wonderful at the Oscars. For we ordinary women who do not have to look smashing on camera and don't spend large parts of our day at spas, with stylists and make-up artists these images flit past our consciousness like pretty little birds outside the window. We aren't going to have face lifts and botox injections and don't have personal trainers. Their world isn't our world.
We look in the mirrors and see faces older than we think we are. We are so trapped inside our own images and ideas that we can't see our own personalities on our faces. But others seem them and many of us are lucky enough to be loved just as we are.

I am among older women -- over 50 but the average age, I'm told, is 73 at the Academy for Lifelong Learning where I take classes and teach a couple of writing courses. The women I see are a sample of women that can be seen almost anywhere in the US in the local supermarket or mall or high school auditorium watching grandchildren perform. They, perhaps, take a little better care of themselves than many for they are smart and attuned to things around them. Most wear make-up, but not so you'd really notice,they take care with their hair and clothes but It's mostly a do-it=yourself look. They look good. I can't think of any who are movie star beautiful, but, of course, they aren't movie stars, they are wives, mothers, grandmothers and some, like me, are even great-grandmothers. They are active and engaged in life, in learning, in sharing with one another,most are active in their community. They are beautiful in quiet ways. Scroll down a little and see how beautiful the poet Szymborska was in her 70s.

A small visitor

This little bird, which seems to me to be some kind of jay, since it was a very dark blue and had a jay-like crest on its head, was on a bush just outside my sewing room window. I did not see him arrive but he sat very still, occasionally turning his head so I could see a big bright eye and the crest. I went and got my camera, took a picture, watched him a bit more, sewed a bit and he was gone as suddenly as he appeared. I do not remember seeing a bird like this before. But I have been hearing bird calls which tell me some spring birds have returned. Four Canadian geese are definitely back, they arrive for breakfast most mornings, stay an hour or so and then go on, possibly to their favorite luncheonette. But they come year after year and are very visible being so large. During the summer small birds of the LBB species [little brown/black birds] often visit that bush outside my sewing room window but they only rest a bit, hop from limb to limb and then go about their business.

Amazing Man on Wire

About a year ago I saw the film Man on Wire on a friend's TV. This is the documentary about Phillipe Petit who tight rope walked between the Twin Towers in 1974. As a documentary film it is brilliantly edited, deftly told with many of the people who helped him sneak in and set up the wire, the background music has been laid in brilliantly -- Eric Satie and Vaughn Williams' Lark Ascending among others. It won an Oscar for best documentary.

I saw it again this afternoon on a larger screen and was even more moved than the first time. We see a driven individual with an great skill and intense passion to perform feats high in the air that become works of art -- more moving than most "happenings" because they are nearly superhuman. They touch an archetypal feeling, that we can walk on air, which is akin to the flying dreams most people have had. We see clearly when Petit finally walks out on the wire that that he is consciously defying death. Yet he is able to put himself into a meditative state that allowed him to walk back and fourth eight times, lie down on the wire, get up and dance on the wire -- proving he was in HIS element which everyone watching knew to be supernatural. The feat is thrilling. The man's spirit, intense and yet full of fun, is more elfin than human except that he is totally driven from the moment he saw in a paper that the the Towers would be built. He extended the definition of what is humanly possible as surely as have the astronauts, as have Beethoven or Vermeer or Shakespeare. Few people comprehend that, indeed, man is not limited by the forces of gravity. Only the fabled yogis have demonstrated this in the past and we don't have them on film.