Artichoke, Pears and an Onion

I often write at the kitchen table and since today was one of those days, I've been glancing at this still life for hours.

The bowl sits to my left, on a shallow counter below the original glass-doored cabinets in this, our 1925, blue-collar Tudor. We've lived here for fifteen years now. The longest either my husband or I have lived in the same place, multiplied by 5. Our children--though born on another continent--have no memory of a different home.

I think this is good.
I think this is rich.

Our yard sprouts plants dug from friends' yards; plants divided from our own yard, year after year: hosta, bleeding heart, day lilly, iris, rudebeckia, veronica, penstemmon, lavender, holly hock, rosemary, oregano, peonie, echinacea . . . the list goes on.

This house--this home--is our community. People come in for dinner; they share a meal, a glass of wine, a conversation over tea. We walk the neighborhood; we know the children, the dogs, the elders who have lived their entire lives on this block. This is my life, and I love it.

I thank God my children have not been forced to wield guns in the streets. I thank God for this oasis--this home in the city--where people can come together.

Today, I have an artichoke, three pears and an onion . . .

What more do I need?

Photo: in my kitchen, seattle, WA

A Tragedy . . . (2): Moving Forward

I know much has been said on the topic of the Virginia Tech shootings, but I feel as if I need to weigh in one more time.

In the six days since this terrible event occurred, every story—whether print or audio—has led me to tears. As the mother of two teens—one soon to be college age—I grieve for the dreams, the hopes, the laughter, the optimism, the enthusiasm, the unique personalities that were lost on April 16. I can’t begin to imagine the depth of the chasm left in the lives of those who loved these young people. I can’t begin to understand how those who have lost daughters, sons, grandchildren, nephews, nieces and friends can move from one day to the next in the aftermath of this horrendous act.

I’ve cried in response to the courage of those I’ve heard interviewed. Every single VT student, professor, friend, sister and brother of the victims, has expressed bottomless grief. But they’ve also expressed determination. These people vow—in the name of those killed—to remember yet also, to move forward. Please notice I did not say: move on. No one can ‘move on’ after something like this. ‘Moving on’ somehow suggests casting aside, forgetting, burying. That cannot happen now, or after any tragedy. There is just too much at stake. If we ‘move on,’ nothing is dealt with; nothing (like gun control and mental illness) is addressed. On the other hand, what more powerful memorial can there be, for these senselessly killed Americans, than to do what we Americans do best—to move forward. A profound testimony to this imperative was expressed by VT poet, Nikki Giovanni, in her beautiful and defiant address to the convocation at Virginia Tech on April 17. Her words exemplify determination in the face of darkness and despair, a courage I believe is reflected in every VT voice I have heard (I dare you to listen without tears.) http://youtube.com/watch?v=0cSuidxE8os

I cried yesterday morning as I listened to a young woman, now 21, who witnessed her best friend’s murder—a fellow sixth-grader—when the girl and others were gunned down ten years ago on an Arkansas playground. She still fears the month of March (the month in which her school shooting occurred) and she had these words to offer those who are now living the same hell that she lived: keep those who have shared this experience close to you forever, as you are bound by a terrible and unbreakable bond that will mean everything to you as time progresses [paraphrase.]

I’ve cried, too, as I’ve heard one person after another ask that blame not be laid. Don’t lay it on the VT and Blacksburg police, don’t lay it on the administrators who were unable to force Cho into counseling, don’t even lay it on the shooter himself (Cho was responsible, yes, and though I’d be the last person to dismiss the destructive power of bullying, what happened at Virginia Tech was not the responsibility of past middle school bullies. It was Cho’s responsibility, 100%, and we must not forget this.) We have become a nation of blame-layers—to cover our own faults, to collect compensation—and the refusal to tag someone with blame is the single most hopeful message to emerge from this tragedy. Young people nation-wide seem to understand that laying blame only buries the issues. Indeed, if one can lay blame thick enough to stick, what more need be done? We have our scapegoat.

The truth is that the blame for the Virginia Tech shootings—for all school shootings—lies with us. We must harness a collective will to ban handguns, to renew the ban on assault weapons and make acquiring a firearm the hardest thing in the world. We’re one of the most prosperous and secure nations on earth—why must we arm ourselves against our own countrymen? (Did you know that the majority of gun-related murders in Mexico occur in connection with guns smuggled from the U.S.?) We must teach our children that violence is not how conflict is resolved; that vengeance is not the way justice is served.

We must embrace the example of the Virginia Tech students, faculty and staff. Forgive, move forward . . . then stand determined to change this country in the name of our children.

Photos:
kristin; winchester mountain trail, north cascades, WA 1995
daniel; Axstedt, Germany 1991

Altered Reality

This post began as an exercise for my Seattle writing group: each of us chose three of our favorite words, then we were to write a poem (or group of poems) using all 18 words.
The poem below (all 18 words included!) was inspired by an article I read last week in the Seattle Times.
Apparently, in the name of better image quality, Google Earth has replaced all of its post-Katrina Gulf Coast maps with pre-Katrina satellite images.

What's wrong with this picture? If a map isn't accurate and real, what's the point?

ODE TO GOOGLE EARTH
for karen l

Consider this:
A mango bobs
on water,
a balloon swept up
in tempest
skyward;
panicked vertigo.
Wind and tide punch
shore and tree
and home
and sea
Until
a placard on a pole,
a door
---twisted,
tangled---
jangle
in a street deserted.

Politicians
so adroit!
Wring their hands and
ruminate,
scowl and scamper,
duck their heads and
cover up;
kings caught in
skivvies.
Later
with ebullience
they vow changes not delivered.

Now
---eighteen months gone by--
In clandestine rooms with
big oak tables
where not one is breathing the aroma
of fish
of rot
of death locked
in homes collapsed,
they futz and alter.

Maps remade
---although they lie
Destruction vanished
---though it hasn't
Neighborhoods
---though dead---
rebuilt
Boats
in harbors nonexistent.

Photo: approaching storm; hanalei bay, Kauai

A Tragedy of Monumental Proportions

Sometimes I disgust myself almost as much as I am disgusted by the extreme actions of a few fellow citizens.

During a phone conversation earlier today, my mom asked if I had heard news of the shooting. I had not--it was long past the end of NPR's Morning Edition and I was in my usual state of mid-day media blackout.

"Shooting? What shooting?" I doodled absent-mindedly on the edge of a manila folder.

"A shooting at a school in Virginia."

I met that statement, I'm appalled to admit, with an immediate internal dismissal. Another shooting--ho hum--at a school. How many have we heard about in the last few years? A coach killed by an angry student; three students killed by a bullied classmate; twelve highschoolers and a teacher killed by two teenage outcasts; five girls shot dead by a troubled milkman . . . . I continued doodling, as if to say: oh well, here we go again.

"They're saying 31 people are dead," my mom reported.

Thirty-one people? I dropped my pen. Thirty-one people dead at the hand of one man? It sounded like the reports we hear every day from Iraq, of suicide bombers hitting markets and bridges and bus stops. School shootings, yeah. They happen all the time--but, thirty-one people? All the other school shootings fell away as I tried to wrap my head around this latest statistic.

"Thirty-one people?" I said, "Is it true?"

Turns out, it wasn't. At this hour, officials in Blacksburg, VA, have confirmed 33 dead and at least 15 injured.

My complacency disgusts me, my acceptance and normalization of horror disgusts me. The degree to which I have been conditioned to filter out tragedy; the fact that we live in a world where--anymore--only the numbers get our attention, disgusts me.

If the shooter at Virginia Tech had killed two, or six, or ten, I bet I wouldn't have been alone in my sick dismissal of the incident. But thirty-three is an attention-getter. Thirty-three (and likely, more, as the critically injured begin to succumb) is now our new definition of the word massacre. Anything less will be subject to hand waving: oh, that's nothing . . . worse has happened.

I hope this disgusts someone besides me.

This is our world, this is the culture my children--your children--will inherit. These things are not happening in far off lands, across oceans, in radical Muslim regimes. They are happening here. We Americans live in a country where every new atrocity inspires, and sadly expects, greater atrocity.

In this regard, we are no different than anyone else.

Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus said. Suffer the children to come unto Me. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Talk to your children tonight. Tell them of this terrible thing. Let them know that they are not alone in the world, that millions of children from the Sudan and the Congo and Somalia to Indonesia to Palestine to Iraq to Afghanistan to Uzbekistan to Pakistan to India, China, Russia, Colombia . . . see these same things--and worse--every day. Tell them we are one in our violence.

We are one.

Perhaps this knowledge will begin to change the world.

Photo: kristin and her hostess; chiyang khop, nepal, 1999

My Dog's Nose

This is my dog's nose (and part of his foot--but we're not talking about that particular body part in this post, so just forget about it for now.)

This nose is almost as smart as my home computer. In fact, sometimes I wonder if there isn't a tiny Intel chip in one of his nostrils. I mean, really, how else can you explain it? He can smell me coming more than a block away; a scent which then triggers a special type of howling that can only be described as ecstatic (she's coming, she's coming! the provider of all things good, not the least of which is my kibble, is coming!) Sight unseen, he can determine the scent of my dear neighbor, who walks him when I'm not home, from the scent of the mail carrier. This, I might add, is a very important distinction. My neighbor's scent causes what we have (not so) fondly labeled 'excitement incontinence'--an erratic spewing of urine that uncannily finds its way into the interior of one's shoes--and a frenzy of nose-poking in the vicinity of a female body region that will remain unnamed. The postman, on the other hand, seems to carry an odor capable of inducing the kind of rage that invariably leads to five full minutes of pseudo-savage window barking, so loud it is often commented upon by people who live several houses away (despite my awe of my dog's nose, I'm not so awed by his ability to adapt--after all, the mail carrier is the same guy who comes at the same time every day, and he has never yet posed a threat to either personal or national security. I mean, yeah: theoretically? The guy could show up at the post office with an AK47, but so far, so good. Does my dog know something we don't know?)

This nose! I tell you, it has imagination. And if it were the brain of an eight-year old boy, it would be labeled ADHD. It has derailed so many neighborhood walks, I've lost track. We're strolling along, enjoying the budding cherries and the tulips, the chirping birds, and then . . . wham! We come to a stop so dead it nearly dislocates my shoulder. My dog's nose has registered a new scent in the grass, or at the base of a telephone pole, or on the shaft of a street sign, or on the trunk of a tree, or on the tire of a car, or in the pile of leaves at the curb, or at the gutter grate, or in the garden of my 93-year old neighbor, or at the front steps of the library, or in the middle of the cross-walk, or . . . well, you get my drift. My dog's nose is an amazing organ, and I only wish I could figure out what the heck it finds so interesting in the most mundane objects. Just imagine how crowded with meaning your life might be if the smell of a bike rack could stop you in your tracks.

My dog's nose is also capable of another--much more macabre--pursuit. That of death.

That's right. My dog's nose killed another creature, just this past weekend. We were at Chimayo and I was driving the John Deere through the grass and brush. Suddenly, some sort of rodent sped from a clump of Oregon Grape (a vole? a shrew?) My dog's nose caught the scent and my dog's feet (oops! sorry, I forgot--we're not talking about his feet right now) trapped it. I yelled, afraid my dog's jaws might crush the creature, and my dog dropped it . . . for a split second. Then he scooped it up with his soft lips, gently. I thought: oh, what a sweet, sweet dog. he's going to save that cute little shrew (or vole.) But, no.

My dog tossed the gray body in the air. Then, like the Seattle Mariners' star, Ichiro, he wound up and hit a home run. As the shrew (or vole) fell back toward earth, my dog swung his very large head and smacked that rodent--by contact with his nose--into the stratosphere. Well, maybe not the stratosphere. Actually, he smacked it toward the mouth of my sister's puppy at which point all the kids screamed, and the vole (or shrew) was dropped, lifeless, on the ground.

It was a sad moment, that realization one's favorite non-human being could be capable of such an act. After we ceremoniously sent the rodent's soul into the afterlife by burning it on a funeral pyre of pine cones, my dog sat by my side. I fancied him mournful. But now, in retrospect--just after he chased the cat up the stairs--I fear I might have been, yet again, guilty of anthropomorphizing.

This morning, out of a 6:00 a.m. sleep fog, my dog's nose appeared. He poked my chin, as he does most mornings, then raised his forelegs onto the bed and nuzzled his head under the blankets.

He was happy to smell me; and I, happy to see him. No matter what.

Photo: zorro's nose; seattle, WA

Easter

"In Christ alone my hope is found, He is my light, my strength my song;
This Cornerstone, this solid ground, firm through the fiercest drought and storm;
What heights of love, what depths of peace;
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease;
My Comforter, my all in all, here in the love of Christ I stand."
In Christ Alone, by Getty and Townsend

Once, years ago, I had a friend who didn't know why Easter was celebrated. Until she asked the question of me, bunnies and eggs had been the entirety of the day. At the time, I was amazed--regardless of whether she had ever attended church--that she could not have a basic understanding of what Easter is all about. I suspect her situation is not all that rare, especially here in Seattle.

So, what is the meaning of Easter? I think--in these unfortunate days as our country moves closer to theocracy and fanaticism; when a very large number of 'Christians' feel it is their place to judge and condemn and proclaim others evil--it is important to remember what Christ did following his resurrection. He didn't go after his executioners seeking revenge, he didn't say "I told you so" to his doubters, he didn't tell his disciples to thrash people with his message. Instead, Jesus returned to his friends and called them by name; he took them fishing; he gave Peter, the man who denied him three times, a second chance.

Of Jesus' last recorded words is the phrase, "Feed my sheep." That, it seems to me, is very significant. Jesus' post-resurrection actions and words were clearly aimed toward meeting the needs of others--first, his family and friends; then, globally, with the injunction to care for (feed) everyone else.

Why is it we Christians have lost sight of this basic truth? How have we strayed so far from Jesus' simple command to be our brothers' keepers, to provide for the poor, to heal the sick, to care for the widows? How do we justify our doctrine of personal prosperity; our theology of blame; our wielding of judgment? How is it we can spend so much time in church learning how to better our own lives rather than attending to the lives of others?

Jesus rose from the dead to tell us to feed his sheep. Easter is as simple as that.

Photo: sunrise; zanzibar, tanzania

Scent of Spring

Yesterday I knew spring had truly arrived here in the northwest. It wasn't the birds twittering before dawn; it wasn't the tulips dotting neighbors' yards like so many wildly colored Easter eggs. It wasn't even the record-breaking 79 degree temperature. What announced the unequivocal arrival of spring was the first gentle whiff of the budding cottonwoods.

Call me slow, but it took me nearly two decades to identify the sweet scent that defines, for me, a Pacific Northwest spring. I guess it just never occurred to me that, in a region notorious for gray skies and endless rot-inducing moisture, the cottonwood tree could be responsible. Cottonwoods, in my mind, belong to arid lands--clumped around cattle tanks in Texas, edging sandbars on the floor of Utah's redrock canyons, snowing their fluffy seeds over the Kansas plains--not to the dripping realm of salmon and cedar. But two years ago, on a camping trip in Umtanum Canyon, just outside of Ellensburg, WA, I finally figured it out. Two species of trees, the Black Cottonwood and the Balsam Cottonwood, are quite common here; growing--as they do elsewhere--around streams, lakeshores and ponds. In April, when the trees unfold their buds, the tiny leaves are covered with a sweet-smelling resin. It is the scent of that resin that permeates everything about spring, including my dreams.

The books call it a 'balsam' scent. I have no idea what that means. It is sweet, as I've said, but not quite floral. There is an earthiness to it, an essence of organic, that brings to mind loam pushed up by emerging plants and grass freshly mown. Though carried everywhere on the breeze, it isn’t overwhelming like the plumes of bloom on the laurel hedge that divides my yard from the next. It is soft and warm; a gentle caress, a promise.

It is spring

And, oh! How I need it.

Photo: balsam root; winthrop, WA