Gratitude Monday: seeing stars

I don’t recall how I came across Patrick Skinner on Twitter, but I’m grateful that I did. He’s had a varied career—including stints in the Coast Guard, the CIA and the US Capitol Police; currently he’s a detective with the Savannah police department, his hometown.

Pretty sure I started following because of the animals: Sweet Dog, Sweet Potato Pie Pup and the Baked Potato on the canine side; MeanCat (history’s greatest monster), the Lady Orangey, the Extra Orangey, Big Eyes (AKA the Punching Assassin), Drunk Uncle Orangey (the feral cat who hung out in the heated condo on Skinnerville front porch), The Little Kitty (introduced by Drunkle) and Baby Alien Agent Orangey representing the felines. Plus the most dangerous criminal gang in town, the Eastside Orangeys—a colony of feral cats whom Skinner and his wife Theresa feed. (All the EOs except Creamy Polenta have been fixed, and he’ll join the ranks soon.)

In the months I’ve lurked, we’ve all suffered the loss of the Lady Orangey, who disappeared one day, and Drunkle, who was hit by a car on his way across the street for first or possibly second breakfast one morning. It still pains me to see the front porch filled with potted plants instead of his condo, pillows and food dishes. (Baby Alien Agent Orangey was a gang member with the Eastsides; after several months Chez Skinner, she’s tentatively becoming a full-fledged family member.) But every day I check on the morning and evening tributes to the Eastside Orangeys, as they gather to receive dry and wet catfood, and occasionally some shredded chicken. I'm expecting Creamsicle 3 to appear through the catflap at Skinnerville in a few days and just join the clan.

Well, but it’s not just the menagerie that makes me thankful; it’s Skinner’s relentless countering of all the ugliness in the world (macro and micro—including a lot of gun violence in his city) by concentrating on the beauty that surrounds us. He thinks of the people around him as his neighbors, even if he meets them committing crimes, and he treats them that way. That’s something I think about a lot. What if the jerk who cuts in front of you in traffic is actually your neighbor, trying to get to a much-needed doctor’s appointment? Maybe the clown on the conference call who will not bloody shut up is your neighbor who’s having a crap day and is struggling to hold it together? Could the person fluttering at the customer support call center be your neighbor on her first week of the job?

Well, I dunno—that’s kind of a stretch for impatient me, but I do think about it.

Skinner does another thing, though, that I can totally get behind: cultivating beauty. His yard is a riot of growing things—basil (guarded relentlessly by history’s greatest monster), Tithonia, camelias, gardenias; a koi pond with sacred lotus and water lilies; kumquats and other things. When work things get ugly, he doubles down on the beautiful things.

And here’s the thing—the beautiful things are all around us, if we only look for them. If we only cultivate space in our hearts for them. I thought about that yesterday morning when I passed by pine trees and realized they were giving me stars:

That made me think about all the other stars I see all the time, but don’t pay enough attention to. 

I’m working on that, though—cultivating beauty, which is—after all—part of cultivating gratitude.

Thank you, Patrick.

 

 

 

This is for my girls

I think for our earworm today, we’ll have something for skeletal old White men to think about. Viz: Christina Aguilera’s “Can’t Hold Us Down”.

 

First response

I’ve spent the last couple of days choking down the gist of Samuel Alito’s draft ruling on overturning Roe v Wade. I’m still steaming under way too much pressure about it to write anything that’s not a total stream of profanity, so how about you have a listen to Trae Crowder’s take on where we’re headed?

Maybe next week.

 

Military gear

Since I had to start using my new laptop, I was going through some folders to try clearing some of the sludge out, and came across this meme:

Although the photo is from years ago, I expect there are plenty of MiGs that are currently in this condition in the vicinity of Ukraine.

 

 

Non-support

I spent an hour on the phone with Cigna and Express Scripts yesterday because the latter’s flipping website wouldn’t let me log on or reset the password. About 20 minutes of that was being on hold—first getting the Express Scripts order-a-prescription person even though I’d called the number for web support, then being walked through the password reset process for Cigna’s site, even though I called the Express Scripts number.

In the end, I couldn’t do what I wanted, which was to upload a prescription from my dentist (which he gave me <cough> in January), so I have to call his office and ask him to call or fax it in.

Anyhow—I need something beautiful after that. So, here’s a daffodil.

 

Gratitude Monday: Spring glories

Dogwood is one of the most glorious things about Spring in the Old Dominion. So guess what I’m grateful for today?

The colors of nine crayons

We’re finishing up National Poetry Month this year with something from Margaret Atwood, because I’m looking for something hopeful.

“You Begin”

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

 

 

Banisters and cannisters

Seems to me that the most appropriate earworm for the last Friday in National Poetry Month this year is “Give Peace a Chance”.

So here it is.

 

 

A passion for bones

I recently came across this early poem by the poetic giant Dylan Thomas. How early? He was 11 and “The Song of the Mischievous Dog” was his first published poem. (In his school magazine.) It certainly shows promise, but I’m rather glad he grew beyond it.

“The Song of the Mischievous Dog”

There are many who say that a dog has its day,
   And a cat has a number of lives;
There are others who think that a lobster is pink,
   And that bees never work in their hives.
There are fewer, of course, who insist that a horse
   Has a horn and two humps on its head,
And a fellow who jests that a mare can build nests
   Is as rare as a donkey that’s red.
Yet in spite of all this, I have moments of bliss,
   For I cherish a passion for bones,
And though doubtful of biscuit, I’m willing to risk it,
   And love to chase rabbits and stones.
But my greatest delight is to take a good bite
   At a calf that is lump and delicious;
And if I indulge in a bite at a bulge,
   Let’s hope you won’t think me too vicious.

 

 

 

Unknown higher beings

Sundown tonight marks the start of Yom HaShoah, Israel’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. Amongst other ceremonies throughout the 24-hour period, tomorrow at 1000 local time, air raid sirens will sound and everyone in Israel will come to a halt for two minutes to reflect on the systematic attempt by Nazi Germany to eradicate the Jewish people on an industrial scale.

It seems to me that the entire world ought to be reflecting on this, given the rise of right-wing extremism who are becoming louder and more confident in their championing of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, christofacism, anti-Semitism, wealth inequity, homophobia and authoritarianism.

Well, today’s entry for National Poetry Month is ancillary to Yom HaShoah. Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s “On the Divine” enjoins us to follow the better angels of our nature, which we all too frequently do not. But the poem was an initial thread between two people from different worlds, and the tapestry it wove became a love that bridged those worlds and endured for decades.

Gerda Weissman, a Polish Jew, was not quite 21 in May 1945 when she and 150 other young women—last survivors of a death march that initially included 2000 concentration camp inmates—were discovered in Czechoslovakia by American soldiers. She could barely stand up, but that put her in better condition than her companions, so she greeted the Americans. As she gestured to the interior of an abandoned factory where they lay, she said, “Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich und gut!”

Kurt Klein, the soldier to whom she spoke was struck by the emaciated, barely-alive girl quoting Goethe, “Noble be man, merciful and good!” As she was treated in a field hospital (where 30 of her companions died), Klein visited her and a friendship grew, which blossomed into romance. Klein and Weissman married the following year, and built a life for decades in Buffalo before retirement took them to Arizona. They had three children, eight grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. Klein (a Jewish immigrant whose parents were murdered in Auschwitz) died in 2002; Weissman on 3 April of this year.

They are an example of Goethe’s noble humanity, and I hold on to them as I look around me at the work of those who would destroy them.

“On the Divine”

Let man be noble,
Generous and good;
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all the living
Beings we know.

Hail to the unknown
Higher beings
Of our intuition!
Let man resemble them;
Let his example
Teach us to believe in them.

For the realm of nature
Is unfeeling;
The sun sheds its light
Over evil and good
And the moon and the stars
Shine on the criminal
As on the best of us.

The wind and the rivers
The hail and the thunder
Storm on their way
And snatch one victim
After another
As they rush past.

So too does blind fortune
Grope through the crowd, now
Seizing a young boy’s
Curly-haired innocence
And now the bald pate
Of the old and guilty.

As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.

Only mankind
Can do the impossible:
He can distinguish,
He chooses and judges,
He can give permanence
To the moment.

He alone may
Reward the good
And punish the wicked;
He may heal and save
And usefully bind
All that strays and wanders.

And we revere
The immortals, as if
They were human beings
Who do on a great scale
What little the best of us
Does or endeavors.

Let the noble man
Be generous and good,
Tirelessly achieving
What is just and useful:
Let him be a model
For those beings whom he surmises.

                        Translated by David Luke