Category Archives: Philosophy Tuesdays

The Need For Touch

Posted on by
Reply

My husband returned from Milan having caught the plague from a friend. Based on the friend’s experience, he knew it was gonna be a doozy. And so it was. He stumbled off the airplane, into the car, hacking “I’m done” and soon crawled into bed. Ten days later, he emerged. Because I’m about to go on a trip of my own, I was more cautious that usual about inheriting the plague. I washed my hands at every turn. I slept in a different bed. The only part of his body I touched were his feet.

Conclusion: it’s very hard to be around someone you love without hugs. We are big on hugs, head rubs, tickling, wrestling, acting like toddlers together. I realize that, without being able to touch him, I feel I barely know him. Call it a basic animal sense. For a woman who would give her first child to the gods of verbal communication, this is no small wave.

In my workshops, I often lead a free-write with this prompt: Touch the contours of your own face for a few minutes and then write. The process unnerves teenage girls. They “hate” it and think it is “stupid.” (Understandably. Every media outlet is telling them that whatever face they have is not good enough) The adults find it curious and often revealing of what intimacy they do or don’t have with themselves. But, one student took the exercise to her elderly hospice patient. She asked the patient whether she would like to have lotion rubbed on her face. Yes. So my student did this… slowly… and the woman crooned, delighted by a delicate loving touch she probably hadn’t felt in ages.

In honor of May day, I’ve made a list.

Things we should touch less: iphones, ipads, computers, plastic.

Things we should touch more: each other, faces, animals, plants, soil, buildings, rocks.

Stripping Off

Posted on by
Reply
Doris Lessing always nails it.
“Almost all humans… have strange imaginings. The strangest of these is a belief that they can progress only by improvement. Those who understand will realize that we are much more in need of stripping off than adding on.”

Montana is good at this, with its white white winter landscape. So are dogs. They know the essence.

Economics of Happy

Posted on by
Reply

Hooray! World leaders are paying attention to happiness. Whoa. Yes Magazine reports the unlikely event of the UN gathering to discuss “Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm.”

I don’t know how they are going to measure this. I hope, PLEASE, that they don’t boil it down to a rating system that often doesn’t expose truth: how much stuff people have, how much money they make. Maybe they’ll discover that those will a little less stuff are happier.

What is happy anyway?

My definition: ease within.

The Importance of Conflict

Posted on by
Reply

An unencumbered stream has no song– Zen saying 

On my list of “The Many things I Almost Did” (it’s long) is go to graduate school for Conflict Resolution & Mediation. Somehow, someday, I will find a way to learn about and apply it. In the meantime, guess who lives in my small Montana town? Deidre Combs, author of two books about conflict. The work she does makes me salivate. Her book “The Way of Conflict” is my bible. Again, one day…

I saw her speak at a TEDx event last week. She said, “We need conflict in order to grow. And it’s unavoidable.” Of course, I know this. I live this, almost to a fault (just ask my husband). But to hear her say it validated my approach to a question I’ve been both firm on and nervous about my whole life.

Do you accept/let go/release or do you engage/change/grow?

It is in my nature to engage the situation. That is not everyone’s nature. One friend once told me to stop beating my head against the brick wall and just find the door. She is more of a leaner-backer. She lets things go and is remarkably good at this. Flip side: Sometimes an ugly beast she didn’t deal with comes creeping up the well to surprise her. I, on the other hand, am a leaner-inner. I don’t let anything go and am remarkably good at that. Flip side: Sometimes I need to chill the fuck out and stop worrying that every little thing I don’t catch will eventually transformation into a life-sucking, resentment-producing pattern.

As with everything, an inbetween rises to greet us. What I’ve come to is a hybrid.

Engage. Then accept and release.

Hearing Combs speak reminded me to re-trust in my innate way (as everyone must trust in hers or his). I will walk into the fire, instead of away from it, because I believe that I’ll emerge on the other side one step closer to my personal truth. And often, the very person/thing creating conflict for me, is my greatest teacher. Again, we all know that one, but it’s hard to remember in the moment.

Even when you are in conflict with … yourself.

 

Bilingual Is Where It’s At

Posted on by
Reply

In high school, I babysat for three small boys who spoke English, Danish and German. The youngest, perhaps so overwhelmed by the multiple languages flying around his home, didn’t speak until he was 3 years old. But when he did, he  began with full sentences. When my family moved to the Dominican Republic, I picked up Spanish quickly, as an almost 3 year old. But hanging with these boys, made me wish for more, for language all around me–new sounds, new tongue rolls, new expression. The NY Times reminds us here that bilinguals or trilinguals learn early how to sort through complicated sequences.

There it is again. The more you expose yourself to the world the better. Get out of the groove, the rut, the same old way of doing whatever you are doing! On principal, I don’t agree with the headline that bilinguals are “smarter” because how do we qualify  ”smart” to begin with? But I do think bilinguals can stretch their brains in ways that monolinguals can’t. Doesn’t it make you want to constantly wrench yourself from the day-to-day to immerse yourself in something DIFFERENT? Maybe it’s only my constant bone to pick, but I bet most folks have the urge.

Rush

Posted on by
1

When my grandmother use to visit us in Dallas, I would sit in the back of her rented Cadillac, stroking the smooth seats and trying to zone out and away from that man-on-the-radio’s awful voice. Voice tells a lot. A lot of feeling. Feeling like he was savage. Savage towards me, even though I couldn’t call myself a teenager yet, even though he wasn’t addressing me personally, even though I didn’t understand all of the rhetoric. Rhetoric is rhetoric blah. Blah blah, please turn it off, I would plead. Plead doesn’t get you anywhere. Anywhere from here is where I wanted to be. Be still, my grandmother croaked from the front seat. Seat yourself down. Down is how he made me feel, down and annoyed and like I wanted to scratch my skin off. Off with his head, I would scream out, if I could have. Have a piece of carefree gum, my grandmother would say, her arm arcing back with the shiny stick. Stick ‘em up, I wanted to yell at him, who cares what you have to say! Say, Pat-Pat (my grandmother’s name), what is this man’s name? Name? Name. Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh. Ugh.

Lightness vs. Frivolity

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, on a mossy/hilly/cedars-everywhere island in the northwest, my friend Dane lured us into a small cave. Once, as a youngster, he had crawled down into this cave until it got so tight that he had to let his breath out to squeeze through an opening 50 feet away. We, of course, were not about to do the same with our adult bodies. But as we lingered in the moist dark of the entrance, as my husband took a photo of Dane, we spoke about the amazing sensation of seeing the light from inside a dark place. The idea is so cliché it almost sheds the cliché.

Early this morning, I read this: “In fact, thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.” –Italo Calvino, Six Memos For The Next Millennium

George Sand

Posted on by
Reply

In honor of the full moon, let’s talk briefly about prolific French novelist George Sand (1804-1876). What a woman. She had her way with the world. Offended some. Loved Chopin. And ultimately followed her own gut, no matter what. On her deathbed, she said: “Let all green things [be].” Knowing what I know of her, she may not have meant plants, but vitality.

Has The Letter Disappeared?

Posted on by
Reply

Now that the U.S. Postal Service is at risk of collapsing, letter writing campaigns are on the rise. Write a letter! Stamp it! Send it! You can almost hear the cries in the street (not that they are that loud). Even our small town public library has a station set up for writing a letter. And authors like Dave Eggers are writing one letter per week to subscribers of The Rumpus.

Want to know how to get a job?

Hand write a thank you letter after your interview (like real people used to do).

You’ll blow your potential boss’ mind, because NO ONE else does that.

I discovered this when interviewing for jobs in New York six years ago. Hand written letters were the norm, I thought, but no…. Potential employers gushed back in shock and amazement that someone had taken the time to put pen to paper.

This whole campaign for letter writing is only one example of a larger and necessary pendulum swing back, no? Sort of like the recent  newspaper articles about wealthy people paying a lot of money to go to a resort where they are forced to unplug (no email, no television, no internet, no cell phones). Sort of like preventative medicine suddenly seeming like a good idea to folks who have not once considered how they care for their own bodies.

It’s all made me realized how much I believe in preventative everything. Don’t start writing letters once all letters have died. Don’t start unplugging once you need someone else to show you how. Don’t wake up to your spouse at age 65 and say, Oh hi, who are you again, I forgot to spend time with you and connect? Don’t eat shit food and then act surprised when your colonoscopy results aren’t ideal. That all might be harsh, but harsh it is. If I want to do one thing well in this life, it is to pay attention. I’m not all that good at it, but I want to try–to not let things slide, to not avoid what I call “painful necessaries,” to dig into it, clear back the muck and keep going.

Haptic

Posted on by
Reply

haptic |ˈhaptik|
of or relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception.
ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Greek haptikos ‘able to touch or grasp,’ from haptein ‘fasten.’

My friend Sam introduced me to this word. Of course, when I search for images that relate to haptic, nothing but iPhones show up. Last night, when I finally tore myself from bed after too many hours off too much over-thinking, I crept over to my dog to pet him. Some ease in petting an animal. At 3.30 am, his tail slapped the ground in quick little slaps and he cocked an eyebrow up at me, What up, human? Haptic, I thought, this might be haptic.

Handful of Fishes

Posted on by
Reply

illustration by Princesse Camcam

There is a chance (there is always a chance) that I’ve posted this poem before. But sitting inside during a ground blizzard slash wind storm while discovering this illustration of a girl with fish for hair is calling Neruda’s poem up from the well.

Ah well.

It is one of my darlings.

Little Devils

by Pablo Neruda

I’ve seen them: the fixers
setting up their advantages,
the arriviste’s alibis,
rich cheapskates spreading their nets,
poets drawing their boundaries;
but I’ve played with clean paper
in the open light of the day.

I’m a journeyman fisherman
of living wet verses
that break through the veins;
it’s all I was good for.
I never contrived opportunities
out of mere vainglory
or a schemer’s perversity;
whatever I saw in my songs
is more than benign propaganda.
True, I did it all clumsily
and for that I beg pardon:
now leave me alone with my ocean:
I was born for a handful of fishes.

Optimal Behavior

Posted on by
2

Couldn’t resist posting a snippet from an interview with Ray Bradbury in The Paris Review (issue 192). I’ve been re-reading this lone interview for a few months. On New Year’s Eve, friends staying at my place found the journal and showered themselves in the wisdom. Which reminded me that it’s sharing time.

I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That’s a different thing. If you behave every day of your life to the top of your genetics, what can you do? Test it. Find out. I don’t know–you haven’t done it yet. You must live life at the top of your voice! At the top of your lungs shout and listen to the echoes….Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad–you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of the year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.

Though magical realism enchants me, I’m not someone for science fiction or fantasy. Don’t read it. Don’t have an interest. However, Ray Bradbury’s words have passed under my eyes–in high school English classes and beyond. The whole idea of books burning whipped up one weekend of intense worry for this once 16-year-old. Bradbury is a man of imagination. And I think that’s an undervalued quality. Shouldn’t we all be stretching and widening our silly putty minds, EVERY DAY? Some other Bradbury-esque sage once said that we we can’t know something is possible unless we can see it (i.e. visualize it). So maybe, in this case, it’s good to slink around Bradbury and imagine something optimal.

We can relate that to almost everything–a friend’s recent and radical career switch, your own leap of faith towards something uncertain, the Arab Spring, the ground level activists imagining a world without the Keystone Pipeline.

But there are real issues out there, you say, Don’t be such a Pollyanna!

Fair, I say, But imagination and action make a fine fine nest.

Here’s to the optimal behavior of visualization.

Day Flecks

Posted on by
Reply

Back after a week of no words–sometimes that departure is necessary.

One day, when we are an ancient civilization and some more evolved human is digging through the rubble, they might discover daily notes of what flecks drifted into individual people’s days. For me, today involved the following:

1) People steal pecans? Apparently they do.

2) Feeling such thanks for Sandra Cisneros, on her birthday today. Her book The House on Mango Street was pivotal for a young me.

3) The women of Cairo protest. “The event may have been the biggest women’s demonstration in Egypt’s history, and the most significant since a 1919 march led by pioneering Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi to protest British rule. The scale was stunning, and utterly unexpected in this strictly patriarchal society.” (NY Times)

4) It only takes a girl video.