Poem: The dark

I fear it's the same as in the old days

Do Jamaican parents still delight in terrorizing their children?

I'd like to forgive it

to say that my mother and her siblings were country folk

so as they laughed like idiots

at making their children tremble in fear

they were ignorant --

not aware that they were building a cavern of fear in our souls.

It's hard, though.

I can forgive the lies they told.

Yes, they were conscienceless in the way they

told self-serving stories to keep their children in line.

I can forgive that.

I can forgive their beatings

and the belts they named:

Stinger with its metal-tip,

Scorpion with its cruel sting.

I can forgive that.

Because they were country folks 

and whuppin was what they did cause they loved you

and wanted to set you on the right path.

But the fear and trembling I strive to forgive.

Because there was spite in their cruel power

when they told us of cruel ghosts inhabiting the dark

when they lay in wait behind walls -- belts in hand-- ready to strike

when they told us what happened to little girls

who do not listen to their mothers and who did not wipe their hands properly

because they had such petty joy in creating terror in us,

because surely there was some other way to make themselves powerful in their own eyes --

other than stampeding kids' hearts.

Because even now the cavern of fear they built inside me

is still operational

when the phone rings

when the mailman comes

when I feel some sudden change in my body.

Because these are seeds 

my mother, aunts, and uncles planted in me

and all that terror

all that fear

is still ingrained

and ever blossoming in me.

Poem: Spin

I'm not wise enough or insightful enough to see beyond the web of the cultural narratives being spun above ny head! I cannot push an envelope if I'm unaware of its size or go outside a box if I don't know its shape but I'm wary of how certain stories are framed -- intuitively instinctively suspicious. I cannot, will not, challenge. I wouldn't know where to begin. Nor am I particularly argumentative... but yes, always, I suspect Spin!

poem: the ones who bring us joy

In the sermon of an ancient writer, a Puritan,

we are commanded

always to pray

for those who entertain us:

the lovely, the witty, the beautiful.

For they give us joy, he said.



It's true.

We use them.

Their wit, their prettiness.

Then we go on our way.



There is someone, very lovely,

beautiful to look at,

whom I have loved.



He lives in my daydreams

and sexual fantasies.

An object.



And I must rememdy this.

Because the beautiful are not made

to inhabit my fantasies.



They live and breathe and grieve and fear.



So, yes, beginning today

I will begin to pray for this person

this lovely beauty

who has

for six months

been my object of desire,

my  desired

                         object.

Poem: The nakedness and helplessness of sleep

And nightly,

the nakedness and helplessness of sleep

we

shed ourselves of clothes and fears.

lying in bed

blankets our only cover. . .

we unarm ourselves of

day's vigilance. . .

our eyes and ears

put away

like sentries removed from duty.

letting go

of self-care. . .

trusting that we're

tumbling

into invisible but capable Arms.

I must learn this

A writer friend I greatly helped and whom I taught has betrayed me. She who I introduced to editors and publishers and whose work I pored over to help her perfect it. She is the one who has betrayed me.

I see her work everywhere now, in anthologies and on websites; Her name is praised on the lips of friends who know nothing of our falling-out. I must keep silent. It's the way of the world. To speak up against her would be considered bad form...perhaps even petty. So the thing will go unknown, and she will continue to use and break more hearts and backs.

The world is full of injustice but I remind myself that it is also full of grace. I'm glad of this grace--this world where undeserved favor flows out from God without care for holiness.

"Solomon wrote that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong or bread to the wise nor riches to men of understanding but time and chance happens to them all."... I've been blessed in many ways that I honestly don't deserve. So, all Praises to our gracious God.

I must try to see clear..that I may clear my heart from this bitterness. The world is full of false friends and smooth betrayers who have convinced themselves that all we have is rightly theirs.

Therefore -- with regards to grace-- we are like them, and they are like us.

They, like us, have received stuff we do not deserve...while others more talented, holy, wiser than we are have been shafted. It's a shame. But we humans like the idea of worth and deserving. So then I can praise (when the grace is toward me) and weep (when grace is shown toward cruel and heartless people) at unfairness of life, all the time resisting the urge to belittle the undeserving, the lucky, or the blessed. I must learn this.

Impossible Dreaming

Some impossible dreams are hard to even imagine. My mind literally cannot imagine them. And then there are the impossible dreams that can be imagined, walked in, revisited. At nights, I revisit mental worlds I've made. Whether the imagined world was created for a story or as a nighttime sexual fantasy or was born in regret, a might-have-been shoulda-coulda parallel life.

These wishes and daydreams play so easily across my mind's eye. They are so solid that I can enter and leave them at any time, at will. Because they have been my parallel life for so long and are so inhabited and lived in. The strange thing is that these fantasies are utterly, utterly impossible. In them I am usually young and thin, healthy and unencumbered by anything from my so-called "real" life. And even those daydreams in which I allow my present self to roam old and fat, the task of entering the daydream of the alternate reality is eerily easy.Yet I don't expect to see these dreams manifest any time in my life. Because parallel lives are only possible in the mental world, and turmnng back time in order to choose a different life...is not something our physicists have much power over. I may believe in string theory and multiverses but this particular me is physicially locked inside this particular universe on this unchangeable irrevocable path.  The everpresent God alone is capable of being and doing in the simultaneous past, future, and present.

There are impossible dreams thar I cannot even imagine, though. At those times, it's as if my mind cannot, for instance, release itself from the actual to dare to dream or imagine better things. Try as I might, I cannot see myself well. I cannot see my son well. Even to daydream...my mind balks.  

I sit on my bed and attempt the What-if? Game. What if I were suddenly well? What if my son could talk and suddenly stopped being sickly? What would I do? I try to imagine us bicycling through the town together. I can't do it. I try to imagine him speaking. I can't do it. Whch is strange. I have spent hours in bed daydreaming of parallel lives, of incidents and people who do not exist...of people who do exist but who would never love me...of strange speculative fiction worlds far from earth. I know those strange impossibilities so well.

But to have faith ..to hope for some possible good..some possible outcome of a longstanding prayer...no, my mind cannot conceive, cannot sow, cannot plant, cannot water..such thoughts.

I'm thinking of a sweepstakes in college and a friend who wanted a blender, the second prize. The first prize was a bicycle. This friend simply decided that she would pray for the blender then believe she had received it. Pics of the blender were all over her house. She talked about where she should put "her" blender. The day of the sweepstakes, all the entrants were in the college hall. Before the winning name was announced for the blender, my friend had already risen from her seat and was walking to receive it. Of course she won the blender! The universe had gotten the word that it was aready hers. Her mind and the blender had become one in God's mind. I've had two other friends lilke that...folks who simply believe that good will come to them because God is taking of them...folks who are constantly winning sweepstakes, getting gifts, lucking out, riding serendipity and coincidences.  

Is this why hope is called a discipline by the saints? Must we train ourselves to daydream good things? Must we gather all our mental strength to simply believe we are loved and made to receive good from a universe with a kind-heart at its center? Is that what the greatest battle of faith is? To trust in a God who has created a world where good flows naturally..if we can only rest in that flow? 

St Paul encourages us to have useful imaginations. But how easy has it been for me to train my imagination to ponder worlds and events that cannot happen...yet to have no skill or discipline to dream that things in this actual world will get better.  Can I attain to the renewal of my imagination and my mind ...even now? Can I learn to sit still and to imagine the far-fetched coming true in actuality? Can I own the skill of willfully erasing all the negative images my pessimistic fears have painted? 

Poem: Sunflowers in Fall

Fall, 

and along the pathway,

the tall once-sturdy sunflowers slump

like weary veterans of some cosmic war.

Some, beheaded in summer,

still seem to beckon to passersby.

Others with drooped heads

seem to mourn their decapitated comrades.

One, 

its stem bent twisted because of

so many twistings

and battles against poles and fences that hid the sun,

looks up at the others

like an arthritic pacifist

who stayed on the homefront avoiding war

yet who nevertheless...

is haunted by it. 

Like sheep having no shepherd

Every now and then the power of this imagery just grabs me viscerally...the whole lost sheep metaphor for lost humanity.

Thig is, so many Christians think of a lost sheep as someone who is confused about right and wrong. Thus, after they get saved, they don't feel like lost sheep anymore because they now "know" what is right and are now on the "right" path.  Other than this being very close to legalism, there is another problem: the fullness of the metaphor is so shrunk and minimized to mean "goodness" that much of the whole existential sorrow of the metaphor is "lost."

The plain fact is that even when we are no longer "lost" in sin, we are still lost in the world.

The Bible states: "It is not in man who walks to direct his steps." This verse implies that a person is on a path, but even then...we need One who has a larger view of life, time, earth, everything, stuff...to direct us.

Other verses tell us: There is a way that seems right to a man but the end of that way is death.
And: Lean not to your own understanding.

The picture God gives us of humans is a pitiful one; sheep running hear and there, listening to the wrong shepherds, drinking from dirty water, sheep being pitifully confused.

When one looks at the food industry and the health industry for instance, one sees how pitiful human rationale thought, human comprehension, human history all are. With each generation new "progress" is made which is supposedly an advance in knowledge. Then the great minds of the following decades refute that earlier wisdom.

So in one generation we are told to avoid natural fats like butter and coconut oil and to eat carbs primarily and margarine and trans-fats. Then after all the sheep have followed this worldly wisdom, suddenly...we are told to eat fats again.

Or, one generation is told to always wear sunscreen and to avoid the sun. Then a later generation of scientists tell us that although the sun "damages" the skin, there really is no link between excess sun exposure and skin cancer...in fact, say these doctors, it looks asthough the folks who get skin cancers get them mostly in areas that rarely get touched by the sun...and people who use sunscreen have the highest rate of skin cancer. One generation says never remove a mold; it might be a melanoma and spread. The next generation says to remove it. One generation says heal epileptic seizures by removing grains, another generation says heal seizures by invasive brain surgery, another generation comes and says heal them by medication, then aother generation says heal them by removing grains. One generation says lobotomize depressed people. Another generation says use anti-depressants, then another generation says use anti-depressants but beware that they can make you suicidal.

This sheep confusion doesn't only affect individual lives but also the life of the earth. One decade, animals/fish/insects are relocated to a new region in order to balance some problem or other. Then two or three decades later, the scientists are bewailing that self-same relocation.

Trusting in human thought is a dangerous thing. We can try our best but we must always be aware that we simply do not know...and indeed, the folks who have created some of the worst disasters (economic, tribal, racial, medical, climatic, etc, etc, etc, ) have been "the great minds of our generation." It's scary to think that not only can we not trust our own minds, but we should be very wary of human reasoning and the many rumors of war (or propaganda) being told to us in the many spiritual,, natural, scientific, medical wars on this earth. We who live at the end of time should also be very aware of the many deceptions, lies, statistics, half-truths, false truths that exist in the media, the churches, the health system, the government, etc. We must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves because our Lord told us "this world cannot receive truth."

God's directions generally do not make sense to the rational human mind. Heck, some of the most spiritual people have wasted so much of their time "understanding" the Bible with their rationalistic minds that they have lost their way.

Human rational thinking fails us, but so does human emotion. All we have left is a purified, sanctified, restored, glorified human intuition. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord and the word of the Lord is a lamp to our feet. We have to understand when God is speaking to us. Whether by coincidence, dreams, or visions. We will hear a word in our heart that says, "This is the way...walk ye in it."

Remember: The Lord had compassion upon the people because he saw them as sheep having no shepherd.

God is not going to be angry with us because we feel idiotic and because we are confused about doing the right thing. He has great compassion. He understands our lives; he knows that we are dust and that we are blown about by every wind of doctrine and every new philosophy or science falsely-so-called that clutters our path.

Crone Poem #5

Empty of flowers,

Overgrown with weeds,

the untended garden is calling to me.

It's mid-summer, though;

Too late to tend it? 

The garden of my body is calling to me.

Am almost sixty;

The stalks sag, the flowers fade.

Weeds are already embedded

Why hope to uproot them?

You've got to die of something.  

The garden of my mind is calling to me.

Overgrown with projects, the soil needs sifting.

Yet new seeds appear, taunting, promising...

Am too busy with old crops to work new ones.

But, my mind, why encourage new growth?

The garden of my soul is calling to me.

Night is falling.

Winter's coming.

Plant only those seeds that will endure.

Memory: Mr Rabinowitz' Toupee

Back in the day, sometime in the mid seventies, when I was in high school in Brooklyn, our class had a favorite substitute teacher. His name was Mr. Rabinowitz. He specialty was word games, particularly Hangman. He was probably about fifty, maybe older, and although he had a very jovial personality and was always cracking jokes, there was something sad and threadbare about him. I think we all noticed it. It wasn't something we spoke about, but it was something always present in our minds. It wasn't that the sole tweed suit he always wore was tattered; it wasn't. But heck, it was his only suit and it smelled vaguely of mothballs, which gave the impression of a lonely old bachelor with no mother or wife to take care of him, of someone who had dedicated all his life to teaching and who had somehow forgotten to live his own life. Of perhaps he had never learned.  

When I said earlier that there was something threadbare about Mr. Rabinowitz, I mentioned the general impression. But there was something else. Something specific. His toupee.

I suppose I should describe this toupee. There really was nothing quite like it. It sat on his head like a bird's nest; very old, very tattered, and very obvious. Even for the seventies, it looked leftover from the rakish fifties. If you have ever seen the Ten Commandments, the scene where Moses and God made the waters of the Red Sea rise up on both sides while the children of Israel walked through on dry land, then you would have a good picture of this toupee. It was rolled up in the front and on the sides and looked like a dense meshy wire of hair. It was as if he had a mini stadium rising from his head.

We never said anything about it to his face but the class bullies -- Steven, Mark, John, Augustine (the same kids who always bullied me) would always comment on the toupee outside his presence.

This went on all the time.

One day, however, Mr. Rabinowitz surprised even the bullies. Mr. Rabinowitz arrived in class with his notorious toupee flipped end over end. The glue, or whatever it is that holds toupees together, had not worked and the toupee sat upside down, wrong-side up, like a hairy-sided tongue on top of Mr. Rabinowitz' head.

None of us said anything. None of the bullies laughed. Mr Rabinowitz was an elder, after all, and not like the younger teachers whom kids generally argued with or continually mocked to their faces. He had obviously dressed himself without a mother, daughter, or wife or even a mirror to help him. Why hurt his feelings? I suppose we thought other adults would notify him of the flapping tongue on his head. I was his favorite student; I suppose he saw something both pitiful and kind about me. But I wasn't going to tell him either.

On the way back home, on the bus, he stood talking to me. The toupee was still on his head --upside down, flapping. No one on that Brooklyn bus said anything.

This is my biggest and first memory of the open secret, the secret everyone knows but no one speaks of. There have been other open secrets since then of course. The teacher with his fly open, the student whose dress was splattered with menstural blood, the secretary having an affair with the married director. But this is the open secret I remember deeply.

I'm not sure if those were kinder times or not. Perhaps no one told Mr. R. about the toupee because they didn't want to hurt his feelings. Perhaps folks just hate discomfort. Perhaps we felt someone else would do it. Those were some of the reasons I never told him. I also didn't want him to always remember me as the girl who made him aware of his embarrasment. Kill the messenger and all that. I'd like to think that he never realized what happened that day or that he only realized this great humiliation when he arrived home and that he somehow convinced himself that it had only happened a second or two earlier and that for most of the day he had been his wonderful, rakish, suave self. 

Poem: Everything old is new again

Everything old is new again; not good.

I wake and sense the return of the old dread, the grief of helplessness.

This is so not good, I tell myself.

I call out to my husband: Bring my Bible, quick!

I repeat the 23rd psalm,

Loudly, desperately, grasping it

like a lifeline.

This is soooooooooo not good.

The autumnal depression is storming me again.

I try to outpace it

like an orphan on a railroad track attempting to outpace a barreling train.

This is soooooooooooooo not good.

Depression, I'd thought we'd parted ways.

So many more rational griefs had my attention 

I'd forgotten you.

And suddenly here you are again.

A nameless barreling dread.

For no apparent reason

suddenly returned and hovering

seeping into, flodding into 

me

attempting to conquer me

The fight has come suddenly

I struggle to prepare,

racing about, grabbing armor

like a sentry suddenly awokened out of sleep.

I've said "suddenly" so many times in this poem.

But that's how it feels

this sudden powerful onslaught:

This is soooo not good.

Poem: Yes, we have no bananas

Over the centuries, living things have simply dropped out of existence.

Human tribes, the dodo, dinosaur, languages,

different species of seeds, nuts, the like.

Now I hear, bees are dropping dead.

All over the place.

Lions, elephants, tigers.

And bananas too

might soon be gone --

some fungus or what-not.

The dinosaurs were before me --

so I don't care about losing them.

Human tribes?

Well, I guess I'd feel weird

if I woke up to see no other black folks around.

But, frankly, I think I'd be able to see

that kind of genocide coming

from a ways away.

Disappearing languages?

Yeah, call me cold..but..

it might be a loss --

certain concepts, cultures, lost because the words they were linked with are gone--

but yeah... I'd still be somewhat unscathed.

The loss of the bees: nah I wouldn't like that.

I mean... no bees, no food right?

But I still trust the humans to kinda find a workaround.

No elephants? Lions? Tigers?

I suppose I'd tell my grandkids about the lost beasts

as if I were describing some great mythic beast of yore.

It'd be sad, but I'd still hold up.

But bananas....

to live in a world without bananas....

no, I don't think I'd like that.

Just keeping it real.

I'm a poet and all

But I'm still pretty shallow and self-concerned.

So, yeah...

Just saying.

I wouldn't go bananas or anything

to wake and find no more bananas in the world.

But I'd probably be really bummed for a while. 

Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian, by Andy Weir

Andy Weir has managed to create an exciting book about numbers. The Martian is a fun book. It’s a quirky book with an engaging main character, but it is not a perfect book.

Its perfection lies in the fact that the main character is as much an alien to the reader as he is to the world he finds himself in. He is an earther stuck on an inhospitable planet where he faces starvation, death by cold, death by thirst if he is not rescued. But he is also an alien -- a martian if you will-- because unlike the rest of us Earthers, he is an astronaut. Astronauts are not made like you and me. They are constantly heroic, they don’t allow fear to oppress them, they know stuff.

Our hero is in danger, but there is absolutely no doubt in the reader’s mind that he will save himself and stay alive until he is rescued. In that respect, the bus has no tension. And yet tension is everywhere because the hero Mark Watney is constantly on his toes and constantly having to muddle through botanical, mathematical, engineering experiments. This is where the fun comes in. The Martian feels like a survival manual. It feels like nonfiction. The reader is constantly being taught about space, chemistry, physics, and botany. But it doesn’t feel as if one is being taught. One is simply being pulled along breathlessly in the wake of a kind of superman whom one cannot identify with but whom one likes because he has good humor and seems like a humble but smart guy.  

But as I said, the book has problems.

The problems are mostly in the sections that are told in the third person. It is here where the author shows that he has much to learn about writing scenes, descriptions, and real characters. The third person narration didn’t add much to the book  and only shows the shortcomings of the author. All that said, I recommend this book highly if you are a math geek and if math doesn’t give you a headache.

This is a short review. A larger review of this book will be up at THE FAN in August 2014

http://www.fantasticstoriesoftheimagination.com/current-issue/fan/

Anatomy of the breakup of a friendship

CLOSEUP OF FACEBOOK PAGE:
It's Thanksgiving 2012 and there are Thanksgiving pics (turkeys, etc) on the page.

OLDER BLACK WOMAN posting on the FACEBOOK PAGE of a YOUNGER WHITE WOMAN:
                                                     "Happy Thanksgiving, you're my best friend!"
She posts the status on her friend's timeline and CAMERA Zooms out and we see three other tabs on the browser opened. One of them is a mail program where she is in a chat with this same younger woman.

OLDER BLACK WOMAN writes in the chat dialog box: "I posted something on your timeline."
The YOUNGER WHITE WOMAN writes back in chat dialog box: "LOL! Off to see!"
The older woman returns to facebook. The young woman has answered the post: "LOL! Oh, you're so sweet! Yes, you're one of my best friends too."
Camera pulls backward and we see the actual older woman.
                                                      OLDER WOMAN
                                    (reading the post and looking wounded)
                                             Oh? One of her best friends? So that's it. Silly me.

An OLDER WHITE MAN comes into view in the background eating a sandwich.

                                                   OLDER WOMAN'S HUSBAND.
                                   (looking over her shoulder at her computer screen)
                                             Uhm? What're you silly about?

On the computer screen, the young woman has written in the email chat: "This is the chapter I was working on for my novel."
Older woman reads it, then writes: "Ooh, love it!!! That's so good!"

                                                  OLDER WOMAN
                                             Apparently, I don't know my place. I'm one of her
                                             best friends. But not her best friend.

                                              OLDER WOMAN'S HUSBAND
                                             Who has one best friend anymore? And let's face it.
                                             She's young. She's got tons of family. She's in college.
                                             She's got a church group. All you have is me. If you're so hurt, tell her.

On the computer screen, the young woman writes in the chat box: "You really like it?"
Older woman reads then responds: "I loooooooooove it! You're so talented."
                                                 OLDER WOMAN
                                   (bitterly)
                                           No, it's all good. It's good to know my place.

                                                 OLDER WOMAN's HUSBAND
                                            Good Lord! Don't take it to heart.
On the computer screen, the young woman writes in the chat box: "I was working on Family Court stuff all morning. Aaargh, the evil in the world! The stuff I could tell you! There's this little girl. Her grandmother calls her a skanky whore. I'm really just so upset at it. But the kids has no one."
Older woman reads then responds: "Ah."

                                                 OLDER WOMAN
                                            I've already taken it to heart.

                                               OLDER WOMAN'S HUSBAND
                                           Don't do anything drastic or anything. She's a good friend.
                                           I mean, it's not as if you see her in real life. So it's not necessary
                                           for you to tell her what you think, is it?
On the computer screen, the young woman writes in the chat box: "I get so depressed sometimes about the stuff I see."
Older woman reads then responds: "Life is hard, yes. But at least you have a lot of friends around you. And you haven't suffered as she has."

                                                OLDER WOMAN
                                          Well, I never tell people in real life how I think.

                                              OLDER WOMAN'S HUSBAND
                                  (reading over her shoulder)
                                        True, but at least in real life, she would see your face and
                                        know she hurt your feelings. And maybe you guys could talk it out.
                                        Besides, you like her so much. You're always worried about her.
                                        Was that a little dig, by the way?

                                                 OLDER WOMAN
                                        Talk it out? Are you kidding? Do you know how shameful it is to let
                                        someone know how hurt you feel because they don't like you as much as
                                        you like them? And yes, it was a dig. But, why is she telling me
                                        her problems if she has all these friends? But don't worry. Let it go.
                                        I'll just listen to her news and be kind. I'll comment and I'll still be nice to her.

Younger woman writes: "Are you saying I've never suffered?

                                                OLDER WOMAN'S HUSBAND
                                       No shutting of the heart, please! And how can you do it? You're both so
                                      sensitive. You've cared about her and worried about her all these years.
                                       I mean...how long's it been? ten years since she was in high school,                                                             right? All through college, and law school, and now that she's got her home
                                       office. She's always been there for you and you for her.

Older woman responds in the chatbox: "I didn't say that."

                                                OLDER WOMAN
                                        Too late. I know my place now. Don't worry. I won't hurt her feelings.
                                        I'll just stop sharing my heart with her and I'll know my place. Darn it!
                                       This girl is always talking about much she suffers more than other people.

                                                  OLDER WOMAN'S HUSBAND
                                   (groaning and returning to the kitchen.)
                                       So you're not going to be patient with that anymore?

                                                OLDER WOMAN
                                       If I cared, I'd argue with her. But now I don't care.
                                       Am not gonna argue. And I'm not going to worry about her anymore.

                                              OLDER WOMAN'S HUSBAND
                                        You're just way too easily hurt.
CUT TO:
CHRISTMAS 2014.
Computer screen opened to several browsers with the email program and facebook open. Older woman reads the email chatbox from the young woman. The young woman's status reads: "As a Christmas present to ourselves, we're going that little girl. It's just too much the way her grandmother treats her."

                                                 OLDER WOMAN
                                          (fuming to herself)
                                               Seriously? Her health is crappy. They're in money crisis.
                                               Her marriage is in trouble. And she wants to adopt this kid?
                                               Darn it! It's like she keeps bringing trouble on herself.

Older woman types her response: "Well, do what you think is best. Pray about it. But if you decide to do it, don't tell me any of the troubles you get into because of this adoption."

Young woman types back: "Okay then, fine." The browser shuts down.

                                                OLDER WOMAN
                                      (fuming to herself)
                                              Seriously! With all her family and friends, she wants me...
                                             a mere "one of her best friends" to care?

Fade out as Spring comes out and we see the old woman's computer screen. The email program is not opened.

                                                                           THE END





    


                                             

Poem: Second-hand, hand-me-downs

Again and again, the kitchen in our church

becomes an obstacle of plastic bags

filled with clothes -- the first owners dead, moved, slimmed-down, fattened up, no longer pregnant.

Or toys. Or DVD's. Or China.

All in excellent shape.

They're in excellent shape because they were given with love.

Unlike the stuff one gives to the thrift shop

where the recipients are strangers.



My friends' kids

get glutted with books I've reviewed

books I've liked.

(Why share what was hated?)

When I visit them they greet me with eyes open

look behind my back for the latest

second-hand-but-first-to-them book.



I have one acquaintance, though...

very rich. A clothes horse.

She brings me clothes.

haute couture, high-end....rarely-worn.

She drops them at my gate

without asking.

without stopping to chat.

I don't know the woman.

But sometime in the past,

she determined to give me her hand-me-downs

determined to upgrade my style.



I wear jumper dresses and jeans,

not stylish for someone not yet an old lady:

this bothers her.



Should one wear clothes from such a giver?

Second-hands. . .hand-me-downs. . .

Ideally, such giving should be communal, should be born from love.

And yet I have worn them.

Because they were beautiful

and one like me could not afford them.



She smiles when I meet her at some hoopla,

glad I'm wearing her gift.

But those smiles. . .

they kill me little by little.

The day will come when I will be strong enough

Not to accept her cast-offs

lying at my gate.

Poem: Adam's First Word by Carole McDonnell

Adam's first words we do not know;

they were not given us.

And what would we understand of them

we, who know so little of life and God?



Did he open his eyes --suddenly

arising from non-being and dust--

and look around at the world

and at his maker

and (smiling in awe)

say, "I Am,

I also now am."



We do not know.



Perhaps this is why

the conversation is left to our

imaginative surmising.



His other conversations

--with God, with angels--

we do not know.

Perhaps they are too personal,

too initimate,

too playful,

too profound to understand.



The first words we hear

from that first Man

was praise to the Friend

who had made a new friend or him.



It is a gasp of delight and wonder,

an ejaculation of appreciation

to the creativity of one whom

I suppose he considered his father.

"You've done well this time!

This is the right way to create!

This is the right creative choice you've made!"



Wonderful "first words"

I think.

And yet. . .

I still wonder:

What did that First Man say

when he opened his eyes

and found himself suddenly a new being,

suddenly alive?

The fantastical arrives in Game of Thrones

I watch a lot of reviews. Hey some folks like reading novels. I like reading reviews. So I've been watching reviews of Game of Thrones on the internet. And an interesting note has crept into the reviews: dislike of the fantastical intrusion. Especially in the finale for season 4.

Yep, apparently, they don't mind dragons here and there, or warging but full-on fantasy is annoying, boring, uninteresting, weird.

Ya see I find this opposition to the fantastical interesting on two counts. First, folks have gotten used to the rational and to the exploration of human power that the fantastical does seem odd. Second, George R R Martin is the writer who has created this stressing problem for these reviewers. Of course not all reviewers hate fantasy, and lovers of fantasy don't have to be religious. But it's interesting that an atheist should create a scenario which essentially echoes the supernatural Day of Wrath...a day when the seemingly rational universe opens up and the magical is revealed.

Let's face it: the folks in Westeros are like the readers of the Game of Throne books and like GRRM. They are pretty involved in unbelief. They don't believe in the supernatural. All the while the supernatural exists around them and is ready to show them what supernatural evil is like.  The world of Westeros is going on in its own human worldly way utterly unaware of encroaching evil or of spiritual matters underfoot. And as I said an atheist writer is presenting this scenario.

Reviewers love the machinations; they love power-struggles. They love the gamesmanship of human power. They love the rational of a known world. They don't like the idea of the unknown supernatural. The supernatural will probably be made rational and understandable in the final end of the series. But for now the supernatual exists. The supernatural cometh. The world we want to ignore is unveiling itself. And yes, GRRM is the one showing this strange situation.

This is what is interesting about Grace. Grace is everywhere, and truth is everywhere...even if the world, the rational, the atheistic don't want to acknowledge grace and truth. And this is why I often laugh when Christians talk about their need to affect culture. Seriously, Christian artwork rarely affects the world. Overtly Christian movies are seen mostly by Christians -- as are Christian book. So the cultural wars --wars that should disturb people by making folks uncomfortable with the whole notion of the supernatural-- are not being won by Christians. It is an atheist now who is making rational people squirm. Love that.  

Notes to a newbie writer

Yes, we all want all our books to be read. . .and loved by everyone. . .but I'm not sure that's possible if one is true to one's own voice.

Think of it as math and subsets.

 There are core fans who will love everything you do, even your failures. There are folks who will like tangents, subsets of your work. Some of it is the way one writes, the stuff one writes about, the genre. My fantasy is well-liked by most, especially my core fans. Some others like my fantasy but hate me being christian. Others just don't like my fantasies but like my bible studies and reviews. So far you have possible fans in these circles: Folks who like true-to-life stories without any pious false bullshittery. Folks who like YA stories. Folks who like Black stories. Folks who like Black YA stories. Folks who like stories about the triumph of human adversity. If there are aspects of your work that complement these different stories, some folks in these circles may like them better or not like them at all.

Think of it as a conversation.

It's like the books in the world are all having conversations. Some are great conversations, some not so much. Our books are our contribution to the conversation. If we repeat what the guy next to us is saying, some folks will like us, some will think we have no voice of our own and are merely copycatting. If we are timid with our voice -- from lack of confidence in our craft or because we are newbies, folks who can recognize that will think we don't believe in what we're saying. If we are asking folks to plunk down their $3.99 for our ebooks (or $14.99) in an important conversation, we should be honest at all cost to us..because the world needs our spin on this great conversation. If we are just playing,then we can play to the restrictions...and restrict ourselves to what folks will buy. I tend to think the world is in crappy shape. I think young black kids need to see fantasy stories with black folks in it. And i also want to heal myself. I tend to think little black girls want to see themselves as sexy and cute and i feel religious books need to be honest because they just are not. So I can't really write without being true to my voice.  But there is always a way to make some money and always a way to get one's book read. They say if one has about 11 books online, one can make a good some a month... so am aiming for this. Will see.

I hope i didn't make you feel that your book should not be bleak. If you want it to be bleak, then go for it. The thing you have to ask yourself is this: Is the book about bleak lives or about a bleak universe? If the characters' lives are emblematic of a world where there is no joy etc, then you don't need to occasionally show other good things...because hopelessness is everywhere. When one writes a story on subsequent drafts, one has to step back and outside of the characters to see if the narration can balance what's happening in the characters' lives. Because if one focuses too tightly on the characters apart from everything else, then there is a claustrophobia and an inability to see past the characters' lives. Which is okay..although that world is enclosed. But if the world is basically good and the characters in it are having a bad life, then there has to be moments in the narration where light shines through...even if the characters themselves don't see the light. The author has to step outside of her identification with the characters' plight..and show that the sun is shining and good is happening, except that the characters are not yet part of that good.

Dark-skinned

My grandfather's house in Jamaica was a tropical paradise. Mango trees, tamarind, ackee, peppers, lime trees abounded. Long trailing woody tomato plants twined around the columns of the verandah and hummingbirds were always sipping nectar from flowers in the front garden. One day, when I was about eight, my half-sister took me to the back of our grandfather's garden underneath the Julie Mangoes and Number Eleven Mango trees and said, "Carole, do you know why I live at Daddy's house and not here with you and Grandpa? It's because you're too-dark and Daddy loves me because I'm light-skinned."

Well, of course I had not known that. And if I had been an astute kid I would've slipped into psycho-analyst mode and asked her why such a thought had occurred to her.

But I wasn't and I didn't. I sucked in that bit of defensive cruelty as easily as the nearby mango trees and a plant we called "The Shamed Old Lady" drank in the water from the watering buckets we carried. I tell all this now not because I dislike my half-sister. I don't. But it must be addressed I think because of its profound effect on me. I grew to hate the darkness of my skin that day. 

To this day, I have no mirrors in my house. I really don't know what I look like or how I've aged. The only photo of me on the internet is the one taken for me for the back of my first novel. In all my novels, the main characters have some big issue with mirrors.

Of course this is not only my issue. I had a dark friend from India -- who was always on the warpath. Apparently, in India she had been told she was too dark. I had a co-worker from India who --when she got pregnant-- drank a gallon of milk everyday because she wanted her daughter to be pale. It was okay, she said, for boys to be dark. But never girls.  I have friends from Asia and India who are finally coming to terms with accepting how "dark" they are compared to others in their culture.  Of course I don't think they're dark at all, but heck..it's all about spectrums and cutural beauty ideals.

It's part of female culture around the world...this fear of being too dark, this sorrow at being equated with poor, country, uneducated, or just plain ugly. I know some folks get annoyed when they see Indian commercials, African commercials, Latin American commercials about skin lighteners. We're all trained...it's so ingrained...the love of the light.   

I'm not Sammy Sosa. I'm not Michael Jackson. I don't have the money to set about lightening my skin. Nor would I do it. I'm much too sane to go messing around with chemicals. And yet, even at age 54 I still turn away from mirrors. I still avoid my reflection. All this stemming from a comment made by a sister in my grand-father's yard. To this day I don't remember what all we were planting, my half-sister and I on that day. I only remember the one dark seed she planted in my heart and how that seed took root and has flourished even to this day.

Short story: Feigned Ignorance

Feigned Ignorance

It's a weapon, a communal covering, a defense -- yes, even a charm-- but it is primarily a skill.

Stumbling at first upon a secret, one's eyebrows unintentionally arch, eyes squint, and perhaps a smile of recognition come naturally to the lips. Ah, the soul says, I see. I see now.

But this is where discretion, self-preservation, and the preservation of the other comes in. It is not perhaps needful to appear to see. This is the difficult thing to teach children. Because. . .for humans, seeing is communal. We are taught to share our seeing. 

When older, we begin to understand feigned ignorance...but even then, we ache for honesty. Our eyes still betray us, might hint slyly at adult secrets. And for the cruel among us, those eyes might even. . .vaguely. . . threaten, hinting that we "know."

But. . .even this "hinting" misses the mark. As I've said: feigned ignorance requires skill.

I have been told that I am charming. Not a genetic charm, I think. This charm was honed in childhood. Cruel households create secrets and children reared in them grow to understand the magical power of not seeing. Yes, some evil can lead to good and I was well-prepared for this world. But I am talking about you; it is you I'm advising.

You have told me that you were seated after work in the dim of the local coffee shop when your married boss and his suddenly-pregnant unmarried secretary passed by. Holding hands. Your eyes meet theirs. In a flash, in a moment, the secret was unveiled before your careless eyes. 

Nothing can be done, you say, it is now all out in the open.

Ah, my friend, do not under-estimate your skill. All is not yet lost. I repeat: do not underestimate this charm.

If we had been forewarned of this occurrence, I would have told you that however surprised, however offended you might be at this sudden intrusion upon your peace...you must hold your gaze. Fall back inward. Shock is easier to control than the world would have us believe, and it really is quite easy to pretend one has recognized nothing. Steady now. . .keep the face calm. Restrain the eyebrow's instinct to arch. Keep your gaze dull, as if your eyes are turned inward...lost in some personal trouble or glorious memory. Pretend spaciness. Above all else, even if your eyes have met, you must not blush, fumble, or turn your eyes away. You must pretend to be less astute than you really are. Seem to be lost in thought. 

I would have told you all that. And if you had -- since childhood-- been skilled at hiding away your true emotions, (or if you had been schooled by me) your boss and his secretary would have believed this.

But all is not lost.

Tomorrow, you must enter your cubicle as you always do. You will do nothing out of the norm. Your boss and his secretary will perhaps hover around you needlessly, spying you out, obviously wondering what thoughts are bouncing about in your mind. The pregnant secretary might even accost you alone in the lunchroom and remind you that you saw her last night. Friend Mine, all this requires skill. At the end of the day, the boss must conclude you are mindless, and the secretary must understand that you saw her but somehow you did not "see." It is not a hard thing to seem unobservant or even stupid in such a situation. For you wish neither to lose your job nor to become your co-workers' confidante and accomplice. It is not a hard thing I'm recommending. You must not straight-out lie. You must not say you did not see them. They would see through such a lie immediately. But you must be utterly ignorant of the hand-holding. Because if they are true to human nature, they would've guiltily unclasped their hands when they saw you. And they will want to believe you did not see. 

Restrain yourself from showing your discomfort. Do not seem to be wanting to "slip quietly away." Do not appear flustered, forgiving, world-savvy. Remember, you did not see anything. You were lost in thought. So there is nothing to be flustered, forgiving, or world-savvy about. And all this is easy enough to do if you feign ignorance well.

Can you do this? Stop worrying and trust me; all will be well. May I tell you a secret? I have feigned this same ignorance when dealing with you. I have, yes. So stop crying. I am not as ignorant or as spacy as I seem.