Like a River to the Sea

Replying to a 21-year-old on a meditation message board who lost her mom four months ago.

I hope you will check in and let us know how you are doing. I don’t have too much to add to the very insightful and caring responses you have received here already, except that the number one thing that helps is time. July is not that long ago, so it is understandable and appropriate that you are still gripped by grief. Be kind and generous with yourself. You want to stay on the path toward healing and peace, but you do not have to force yourself down it any faster than you are ready to go. Your exam results, I’m sorry, they might really suck this year. Don’t set your expectations for yourself unreasonably high. Of course you always want to do your best, but remember, “Cs get degrees.”
And all the steps you are taking to soothe and heal yourself–your notebook and flute, etc–that don’t feel like they are helping, they are helping. They are not going to stop the pain, or make you not feel grief, but they are going to help you get through it a little better. I called it a path, but maybe it’s better to think of it like you are floating down a river in a little boat. You have to go alllll the way down the river, you don’t get to just abandon the ride, but these little steps you take make the ride easier, and in the end, more fruitful.
And, speaking of the end, the river never goes away. It flows to the sea and becomes part of it. The sea would not be the vibrant, vivid, glorious place it is without those rivers. Take good care of yourself and hang in there, your little boat will carry you, and the river will inevitably flow to the sea.

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November 3, 2016

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A Couple of Things That Have Tended Toward Trueness

I, in my oldness, have noticed a couple of things have tended toward trueness over the years. One is that often — it’s really only noticeable with friends that I don’t see very often — I’ll hear about something that is one way, and then months later when I next hear about it, it will turn out that actually no, it just seemed to be that one way at the time, but now we realize that we were making faulty assumptions and it has in fact turned out to be a different way. This is a thing that often happens. Some of what we now KNOW to be true will someday turn out to not be as true as it now seems to be. It doesn’t mean never believe anything, because obviously a lot of stuff is true now and it’s been true and it persists in remaining true. But it does mean keep an open mind.

The other thing I’ve noticed is almost exactly the same, it’s just got a different slant. It doesn’t have as much to do with anyone else or external events. It’s just that things that we think we want or don’t want … sometimes we haven’t really looked to see if they really are what we want (or don’t want). They just sound like the right thing, or it’s a plan that was made long ago and never re-assessed, or just, no one thought it all the way through. Just because a little girl wanted a pony does not mean that if she has the resources to get a pony when she grows up she has to do it. If she wants to, fine. But if she doesn’t want to, it’d be good to tune in to that before signing the pony check.

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March 8, 2014

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Sudan. The Acropole Hotel, Khartoum

I don’t like to travel — at all — but I do have a longstanding desire to visit Sudan. And now, reading this, if I ever did go, I would definitely stay here.

Dr Sophie Hay

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After a “restful” 3 and a half hours sleep I awoke to a phone bleating in my ear. It was George.

George Pagoulatos is the owner of the Acropole Hotel, the oldest hotel in Khartoum. George runs the hotel along with his 2 brothers, Thanasis and Mike, and now George’s nephew, Pablos. George is Sudanese by birth but of Greek descent and his father, Panaghis, founded the hotel in 1952 after having left his poverty striken homeland of Greece in the last years of World War Two. The hotel started with just 10 rooms and all the furnishings were brought from their own home. Ambitious in the face of adversity, George’s father expanded the hotel and the family businesses while his mother held the family together. In 1970, disaster struck as President Nimieri nationalised Sudanese industry and foreign business abandoned the country and so taking with it, the clientele of…

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February 28, 2014

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It’s not just pictures of breakfast

Today my twitter time line (or TL as us cool cats call it) has been consumed by the impending verdict in the trial of the creep who shot Jordan Davis. I checked in on the #DunnTrial TL frequently. Not because there wasn’t plenty of discussion on the topic already in my TL, but because I needed a snapshot of what’s happening now— have they finally announced a verdict? — and then I would switch back to my TL to read more completely the reactions and observations of the people I follow. “Completely” may be a daring adjective to describe reading tweets. But some people are very eloquent on Twitter. After you’ve followed someone for a while (Twitter has been around for years, and so have some following relationships) you begin to know just exactly what they mean, even when they tweet a single word. Or just something word-like…

In other cases, people will post a series of tweets to express more in-depth observations and feelings, as @thewayoftheid does here: “Can you turn down your blackness…just a little?”

And some people just have a knack for (or get lucky) saying it all in 140 characters or less.

But back to the horror at hand. When I came upon this tweet from @Karoli,

I thought of the many times that a cultural event has really floored me, when I’ve just had to let the news and opinions and trolls and grief and jokes wash over me in a deluge of information and feeling. In these times I have found that when I read Ta-Nahesi Coates I feel a little more grounded. I might not even be clear on what he’s talking about, but reading his writing, getting his take, I feel better. What he says here is not a feel-good message, not by any measure. But it feels good that he’s said it.

From On the Killing of Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn by Ta-Nahesi Coates, this sentence in particular struck me:

“I insist that racism is our heritage, that Thomas Jefferson’s genius is no more important than his plundering of the body of Sally Hemmings, that George Washington’s abdication is no more significant than his wild pursuit of Oney Judge, that the G.I Bill’s accolades are somehow inseparable from its racist heritage.”

I knew about Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. But I didn’t know about Washington and Oney Judge. I followed that link to the Oney Judge Wikipedia page and spent an engaging though horrifying time being introduced to this sordid history. The historically noble Washington’s blatant hypocrisy in his statements about Judge’s freedom are appalling, and at the same time, not even surprising.

When a Wikipedia page really draws me in, I am always interested to see what links and sources are given. Naturally, this link at the end of Oney Judge’s page caught my eye…Funny or Die…Drunk History: Oney Judge. It’s in some ways more insightful than the Wikipedia page.

And by the time I got here, I am of course thinking How do those people who aren’t on Twitter even know what’s what?  I’m a little concerned that they just don’t. As for me, I’m going to have a glass of wine, steel myself, and then click on that its racist heritage link. This is gonna hurt.

Twitter

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February 16, 2014

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My New Adventure – Again!

I love following my friend’s beautiful ventures. Thank you for sharing this, Diana!

it's all about color!

I arrived home yesterday after spending two days camping with my 15 year old son, Liam Camping June 2013Liam, in Marin County at Samuel P. Taylor State Park. It was a lovely time. “Bonding time with mom”, my son says. He’s very sweet and we had a good time together. We did a lot of nothing , which was perfect. Lots of sleeping and eating things we shouldn’t, sitting around and playing cards, reading, hiking and oh, yes, I did manage to get some dyeing in the afternoon of the second day. I’ve been collecting acid dyes from Dharma Trading for the past few years and have felt in the redwoodsused all of them from time to time but I needed to get them all together at once and really see what I had. So I decided to dye nine inch square pieces of 70% wool felt, one with each of my colors all at the…

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June 9, 2013

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This turned out well

Kid’s not feeling well and has a lot to do (modest high school over-achiever) so I quit nagging her to clean her room and be responsible and fixed her some food. Not because I’m such a nice mom, but because if she doesn’t eat we all suffer. She wanted “rice mush,” a help-you-get-well food from her childhood. I wanted her to have protein and veggies because if she only eats carbs we all suffer.

I heated up about 16 cubes of chicken broth (we always have homemade broth ice cubes in the freezer) and added 1/3 cup of rice. Let it come to a simmer then put a lid partway on it and ignored it till she asked when would it be ready. Oops, I’d let too much broth cook away and now it was just rice instead of rice mush. I added 8 more cubes of chicken broth and splashed in some hot water from the tea kettle. When that was all hot and steamy, I cracked an egg into a deep soup bowl and gave it a good beating. Then, briskly stirring the rice broth, I poured the egg in. Stir stir stir. This was an adulteration of traditional rice mush and I didn’t know if I’d get away with it. To distract her, I sliced a couple of radishes into thin coins and three sugar snap peas crosswise into skinny ovals. Put the cooked rice egg broth mush into the bowl, salted it liberally, topped it with the sliced, raw, crunchy veggies and gave it to her. She ate two hearty bowls of it and said “yum, thanks, Mom.”

And there was a bit left over. I added the quarter cup of leftover spinach from my yummy Well Fed Paleo -style dinner a couple of nights ago and some Ume Plum Vinegar and gobbled that up myself.

Food

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April 27, 2013

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I love football, but it’s not about me

I suspect that people who love football, who idolize and worship football, think that people who would ever criticize the game just don’t understand it or love it like they do. Maybe they are right, but maybe their passion carries them beyond being thoughtful, reasonable, or realistic about it. (That sentence makes me think of Penn State, but that is not where I intend to go here.)

Today I’m thinking about the players, the stars of the spectacles that we all get so much enjoyment from watching. Even the relatively unknown players are stars of the show. They are on the field, they are on the sidelines, they practice. They take hits.

I know it’s not going to happen, so don’t argue with me about being unrealistic, but I’m thinking a lot about what if there were no more football? Not just how much I would miss it, or how lost my husband and millions of other people would be all fall, but what would our world be like without football? Not the if-football-never-existed wondering, but if the football culture we are all part of (even those who have never watched a game and don’t know a single player or rule) just…stopped.

I can’t even imagine exactly how we would get to that point. But I have been following the increasingly numerous and inescapable reports about brain injuries, players committing suicide, former players living lives of depression, pain, and poverty. And I feel more and more like the dark side of what we love so much is just becoming too dark for me. What if it became too dark for all of us?

Sure, all those amazing athletes would be out of work, those giant salaries would be gone, that would be terrible for them. There’re also all the coaches, trainers, assistants, equipment managers, refs, cheerleaders, and everyone else who is involved in the game. Everyone at the stadium — selling tickets, providing security, selling food, directing traffic, ushering, cleaning up.

All the people who broadcast the game — camera people, announcers, producers, directors, assistants, I’m sure the credits after the game don’t mention the name of every single person employed by Monday Night Football, Sunday Night Football, and all the rest.

The people who design and make and sell all that equipment. Balls, uniforms, padding, shoes, nets, frames, hats, helmets… Things the players wear, the coaches use, the trainers work with, the groundskeepers drag around…

I’m sure I’ve just scratched the surface, and it spirals out from there… Businesses near the stadium. Products, unrelated to football, advertised during football games–beer, trucks, cop shows, burgers.

The aspects of our culture that are football-influenced or related or adjacent are innumerable. And profitable. And important to many many people’s lives and livelihoods. And I haven’t even mentioned college football except for that glancing reference to Penn State. The scope of football’s influence on our economy and culture is not something I can effectively quantify here except to spread my arms really really far apart and say “It’s THIS big!” Very big.

Maybe as big as the auto industry? Comparable, I think, in its tentacled-ness. So, when it comes time to shine a harsh bright light of examination on it, and it looks ugly, any wonder we want, even need, to shut that damn light off?

Are some men losing their minds for this game? Is it too big to stop? What would it cost? How much pain and suffering would come from the end of football, if such a thing were even possible? So — do we sacrifice these players for the good of this industry that so many people love and depend on?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I wish I didn’t have them.

More and better on this subject ——————–

Patrick Hruby, Game Over Sports on Earth

Dave Zirin, Junior Seau’s Family Will Allow His Brain to Be Studied

Jason Whitlock FoxSports

Bob Costas Slams Gun Culture Salon

“ESPN reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru are writing a book about football and brain injuries, to be published in 2013 by Crown Books, a division of Random House. FRONTLINE, in partnership with ESPN’s Outside the Lines, is producing a documentary based on the reporters’ research. This article is a product of these partnerships.” PBS

Ben McGrath “Does Football Have a Future?” The New Yorker

Amy Davidson “Kill the Head” New Yorker Online

Alan Schwarz NYT

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December 3, 2012

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An Amateur Rebuttal to Dave Weigel’s Concealed Carry Weapons Expert

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/07/20/could_an_armed_person_have_stopped_the_aurora_shooting_a_second_opinion_.html

Dave Weigel spoke to Greg Block, a “California-based firearms safety trainer, certified by multiple branches of the federal government, with 29 years of experience” for a response to the claim that a trained armed person could have prevented many of the deaths at the theater in Aurora, Colorado. Block says, “All you need is one person there with a gun. If this went down in Texas or Arizona, he would have died quick.”

Really? I’m no weapons expert, but I’ve been in theaters, and I think even I have enough expertise to poke holes in this claim. Block’s description of what he would have done casts each of his actions in the perfect sequence and reaction to exactly what we now know was happening in the theater. Having eavesdropped on kids at playgrounds caught up in vivid games of imaginary adventures, I couldn’t help but hear parallels….

“and then I’ll sneak up on you and–”

“No! I’ll hear you, and I’ll jump behind a rock and–”

“But you can’t because I stepped on your cape and –”

For starters, Block says, “I can draw and get shots off consistently in 1.3, 1.2 seconds.” Almost every witness has said that they didn’t realize what was happening at first. They first thought it was some sort of publicity stunt. But not Block, he is already shooting. That 1.2 second draw-and-shoot clock can’t start until you’ve figured out what’s going on. Well, it shouldn’t start ’till then. But news reports of armed heroes shooting door-to-solicitors, passers-by, even their own kids, are only too easy to find. Pretending to shoot a gun in a theater should perhaps deserve the death penalty, if you believe in that sort of thing, but isn’t the poor actor entitled to a trial first? Should the agent of the PR firm that arranged the stunt face a firing squad? Even more critically, how many seconds does it take to determine if the shooter you see, especially dressed in SWAT-type gear, isn’t a first-responder already shooting at some other shooter in the theater? Even the police encountering That Cowardly Shooter (TCS) outside the theater when they arrived on-scene wondered if he was one of theirs. No time to worry about that. Block’s here, he’s got his gun, BLAM-O! the guy’s dead.

Oh wait, no, he’s not dead yet. We need to back-up 1.2 seconds or so. Before Block can do his under-two-second wonderman routine, he has to go through this: “I want to get down on my knees. You know the curvature between the two seats? That’s where my muzzle is going to be. I find the V, the gap between the seats, and I move down into the row where I have a clear shot. Now, I could stand up over everyone else, and engage him. If I stand up, I can see him, he can see me. If I’m down low shooting between two seats, I have a tactical advantage. I can crawl between them, pop up, take a shot.”

Well, all right. Assuming Block isn’t among the first people shot, assuming the seats are configured just as Block imagines, assuming there aren’t innocent people blocking Block’s shot, assuming TCS isn’t continuously moving while Block is on his knees, crawling between seats lining up his shot where no other audience members are taking cover, or lying injured — yeah, forget it, all these assumptions are TOTALLY spoiling this story. Let’s get back to the way funnner version Block spins for us.

Bringing more specifics into the narration of this imaginary scenario, much like moving up a level in a video game (although generally you have to have some success in the game before that happens, and I don’t think we’ve identified any success here…but oh well), Weigel cites TCS’s “tactical advantages” starting with body armor. No problem for Block, he’d simply shoot the guy in the head, or the pelvic girdle. While on his knees crawling around in the aisles, poking his gun between the seats, and not shooting bystanders? Damn! That’s aim!

Weigel points out the darkness of the theater, the noise from the movie. Block considers those advantages in his favor, not TCS’s. He doesn’t elaborate here. Since I can’t imagine how he realistically even gets to this conclusion, I can’t even refute it. Point for Block.

But, oh, the tear gas. Here Block concedes, yes, we have a hurdle. Block says that with the gas, TCS would be “shooting fish in a barrel,” a macabre analogy used by some of the actual witnesses as well. At this point Block also acknowledges that the movement of other people in the theater could prove distracting. Is the swagger wavering? Block explains that “anybody from the military would hit the deck.” I don’t think he’s intending to make the case that our theaters be occupied by active military, but I guess at this point, it’s as valid as some of these other claims. I also don’t think he’s intending to unravel the whole crawl-through-the-aisles-in-the-smokey-dark-around-the-distracting-and-possibly-injured-people-and-shoot-between-the-seatbacks-at-the-armored-moving-target’s-tiny-head plan, but isn’t that what he just did? Pretty much everyone in the theater hit the deck as soon as they realized what was going on. And some victims did indeed save the life of a loved one by doing this, at the cost of their own. Could those heroes have saved anyone if they’d been struggling to point their pistols through the seat backs at the moving, armored, almost continuously firing target in the poisonous, smokey dark? Given the remotely possible but extremely improbable scenario Block lays out for us, I think the answer is obvious.

Weigel’s post starts with Block stating “…all you need is one person there with a gun…he would have died quick.” By my reckoning, within a few paragraphs, Block has dismantled his own claim.

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July 22, 2012

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Hating oneself is unproductive, however

When faced with a blank page, digital though it may be, that sense of wasted opportunity looms before me like a mountain range. In winter. And my last name is Donner. I see every page that I’ve ever left blank, which, you know, is all of them. I was supposed to be a writer. What happened to me?

I sat around, having a good time, for which I am grateful, and whining about it, for which I am so filled with self-loathing that I am virtually paralyzed. And then I whine about it.

And you read it. Caught you in my saucy web now, haven’t I!

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July 11, 2012

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In fact, I am a lazy slacker

Okay it’s been a bit under a year since I was last here. I love the constancy of a true friend. That sounds sarcastic. But a true friend is waiting for you, even if you get distracted for a long time. That’s why I’m switching to all-digital friends. Apparently.

Anyway. This morning I’m going to sit down and just read on my iPad like it was the Sunday paper, about which one need feel no guilt. Because the Sunday paper is a sacred western rite, right? Right. And I made myself a spectacular coffee to go with it.

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Here’s how.

One spoonful of coconut oil in your large coffee mug warmed in the microwave. Add one spoonfull of cocoa powder. Whirl them together wildly with a mini stick blender (like from Ikea). Add a suitable amount of half-half (in my case this is about a third of a cup; my mug is large!) and warm that in the microwave too. Again with the wild whirling, only this time you don’t stop. During whirling, you slowly pour in the strong coffee that you already brewed even though I forgot to mention it in the recipe because you know well enough that a spectacular coffee is going to need to have some coffee in it, and you’ve got my back. When the coffee and whirling other stuff all come up to the top of the glass, stop pouring or it’ll be all over the counter. Drink. You might want to add a sweetener because unsweetened cocoa is pretty dangled bitter. Or you might want to drink it as-is, to serve as a complement to the sweetness of sitting down with an infinite read. Or drink half unsweetened and then say to hell with this lofty bs and stir in some agave, that’s also good.

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May 27, 2012

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