Anne Coe CoeVert

2008-06-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

Finally, I am back. I couldn't figure out how to get back on my blog. The good news is that IT IS ALL OVER and I am going to the surgeon on Thursday to see about reconstruction. I have Bill Clinton to thank for this because he signed the bill that told insurance companies that they not only had to pay for breast reconstruction after a mastectomy they had to pay for the other one to get a lift. If I am lucky I will come out of this with 2, 20 year old breasts (they don't reconstruct any other kind, why would they?) and a tummy tuck as they sometimes use the tissue from the stomach area to make the new one. Who would have thought that one could come out of this and be not only okay and cancer free*but get a new body too.

*The interesting thing about all this is that I didn't have cancer. I had DCIS which are weird cells that maybe could become cancer. There were dead cells around the duct which means my body was fighting it off. I wanted to take no chances and called in the big guns. I don't regret it at all. One doctor described DCIS like this: It is like a bunch of teenagers drunk and out of control but they haven't got into the car yet. It works for me.

2008-04-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was hysterical in the surgeon's waiting room. Crying, no weeping in my sister's arms. Filled with a deep grief and agony. Hoping for the best, expecting the worst. I am a little embarrassed about that. Why is that? I should be stronger, I suppose. I was after I knew. I just can't stand knowing.

The results of my second biopsy and it showed cancer in a different location in the same breast. Mammograms (at least 6) showed other areas of concern. The decision was not a difficult one, simple mastectomy. Simple is their word not mine. Is anything like this simple? I am greatly relieved and just want it over and not have cancer anymore and not have to worry about it. April 15, tax day, Banner Baywood 2:00. I realize it is difficult to think good thoughts on that day, but I could use the good energy.

My friend Jim who has suffered immense pain and multiple surgeries is leaving today. Going back to Iowa to be with family until he is completely recovered. Although I couldn't see him in the hospital because of my immune system and his MRSA we have spoken daily on the phone. The phone still works in Iowa, I assume, but it is different somehow. That and the crashing realization that I am loosing a part of myself that has been with me through so much, leaves me saddened. Too much to loose.

2008-04-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

It's 7 am. I have been up since 5. In 2 hours I should know what is going one with this second biopsy. Waiting is the hardest. Cyndi, my veteran guide, is picking me up at 8:30. I can't concentrate on anything else.

2008-04-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Tomorrow I find out the results of my second biopsy. It is not an easy thing to face. I am not certain how I feel. A little like I can do this no matter what and a little like I am terrified and out of control. Well something is out of control in my body that is for sure. Are cancer cells me, or are they alien microbes living in my body. I don't really know what to think of them. Are they innocent or are they the incarnation of evil? If they are me, why are they doing this and why are they out of control? Did I do this by some choice I made in my past? Is this random? Is this a joke of destiny? What in the hell is going on here?
My pen pal Linda wrote this about my chakras after she analyzed a picture of me:

rescue remedy on the base (1st chakra = survival) treating for severe upset/shock

centaury on heart treating to strengthen your will = to believe in yourself = your power to heal and overcome

sweet chestnut on crown (7th= spiritual connection) for endurance from anguish and feelings of dejection = like God doesn't care

My old friend Anne Adams called yesterday. We worked together at Channel 8 centuries ago. She is a survivor and reassured me that yes, this too will pass. It seems endless and I've not even started.

2008-04-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

Everyone says that having cancer is a journey and that I am being given a message and that I have to listen to my body and figure out what it is saying to me. So far it is scaring the hell out of me and I spend most of my time trying to calm myself and have a positive attitude which I usually do or did before this happened. I am not good at waiting. I want to figure out what to do about this and can't until all the data is in which I have no control over. So far this has been a messy business filled with unsightly things, blood and bruising,squishing and waiting. The horrid waiting. As a journey it is not unlike my first trip to Europe when I lived in trains with my Erurail pass. I was younger then and more eager to release control over my destiny to strangers. That is the hardest part now, surrendering to strangers and asking them, for a fee, to save my life. Odd place to be after learning to do just the opposite, which is to take control over it. Someone will say, and correctly, that I can control how I react to all this and that is what I am trying to do.

2008-04-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about what I want people to say to me when they find out. So far the best face to face thing was, "been there, done that." followed by a hug. I have had so many hug lately mainly from fellow travelers who have gone through it. The worst thing so far is when someone starts telling me a horror story about someone who had IT. I don't like to hear, "I am sorry" or "how terrible". I want to hear success stories and about how strong I am and how it is just shit I have to get though. My cousin, Judi sent me the best letter so far. Here it is:

I'm sorry to hear the journey continues down rockier roads. Imagine the victory at the end, so much more the victory given the challneges. With a higher degree of difficulty dive, comes the opportunity to "wow"! Never before have you been in such a position to take control over the mind/body connection. You get it. You are a winner!

Begin with the end in mind -- see every cell cancer free.

Keep your mind strong (it is your power and always within your control). Do not allow even a small crack of mental doubt -- as that is an entryway for dis-ease.

I am here with you every day searching the corners of your mental energy and sending you positive energy to keep the healing power strong.

The music will put you in the proper state to connect with all that is good. Good heals. Refuse the bad, avoid the negative, embrace your soul.

Do something fun today. We are going to the Tempe Arts Festival. Jane and Christa are in town. Come join us, they would love to see you.

Grace and Peace are with you.
Be confident.

I love you.
Judi

2008-04-01T06:59:00.000-07:00

I had one of several meltdowns yesterday. The insurance company sent me a letter that wasn't the regular size and I couldn't open it. It is just too awful. I had to wait all day until I got together with friends and had them open it and read it. It wasn't as bad as I thought but they have to nickel/dime you to death. Why don't they just pay the damn bills like they are supposed to. I don't get it. The worst part, at least the most emotional crazy part of this whole ordeal shouldn't be the one thing that is supposed to rescue you because you pay in so much every month. I could go on but I am going to go have fun. They make it hard to have a spiritual journey which is what everyone says this is.

2008-03-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

April is the cruelest month
breeding lilacs out of the dead land
mixing memory and desire
stirring dull roots with spring rain. T.S. Eliot

I think that is how it goes it is my poem for April anyway. Here, in the desert, it is the cruelest month because we know that the heat is coming. Our harsh time, our Minnesota winter. The time for hibernation and contemplation.

Mornings are difficult because I wake, energy levels low and the dawn not yet breaking. I struggle to find peace, to remember my strength. I search for it inside of me. It is supposed to be there. It struggles to wake up just like me. I am strong, healthy and at peace.......I will do this...

2008-03-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

I have DCIS. ductal carcinoma in situ. It was described to me to be something like this. A teenaged boy is drunk out of his mind and has the keys to the car in his hand but he hasn't gotten into the car yet. I have to stop him. I will any way I can. It is really upsetting to get this diagnosis despite people saying congratulations to me and adding, "you have the good kind". What does that mean? Good Kind? The best of the worst, I suppose. I realize there are worse things but sitting here with this shit growing in me is scary, very scary.

I was sent to have a bilateral MRI which I have come to understand as the new standard protocol because, the theory goes, if one has the conditions for cancer in one area of the breast then it is not unlikely to find it some place else. Ask for it and you will get it. They found SOMETHING ELSE. I don't know what it is, if it is anything. Could be a false positive or something worse, something dire, say, stage 4 metastatic cancer that has spread all over and explains the little nagging pains I have in my side a 3:30 am.

NEXT: The girls are a lot of trouble now

2007-11-30T05:24:00.000-08:00

I find it odd that I can sleep easily, when I am not supposed to be sleeping, but when I turn off the light and get all my pillows arranged the night visitors come and demand that I stay awake and give them the attention that they feel they deserve. They are demanding, irrational, irritating, insatiable. Their constant questions are unanswerable. Is there solace in Descartes, cognito, ergo sum? More in poetry, than in science, cognito: TS Eliot knew.

Inside my brain a dull tom-toms begins
absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
capricious monotone

2007-11-28T09:18:00.000-08:00

Fear and greed should never be the guiding light in our lives.

2007-11-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

Why are God fearing people so often surprised when something bad happens to them? They act as if they are somehow the chosen ones and if they do certain rituals; go to church, pray, tithe, etc than nothing bad can happen to them. It is as if they can buy God's grace. Rosemary's grandson is having his first crisis of faith as his father is sick and he doesn't understand how a loving God can do this to him. It is hard to explain to a child still in the throws (sic) of pre-critical naivete that that isn't the point of a relationship with God. The point, I think, is that bad things still happen but that we can handle them much better when they do if we have that inner voice to talk to. Now I don't even know what God is and I don't really know why a relationship with IT works but it does and it is much better than being alone in a vast, indifferent cosmos. I guess that is what grace is although I am not sure. I know what it feels like. Can grace be defined or is it like love,romance, hatred, etc. another one of those words for the poets?

2007-11-26T06:12:00.000-08:00

I have been tagged and have to tell 7 random things about myself. Here's a start:

1. I have rules that I must obey and they are: Never marry outside of your species and always have a current passport.

2. I have different personalities that do certain things for me, like attend meeting, speak publicly, There are 3 of them.I wrote about them in a prior blog so I won't repeat here.

3. I have enjoyed on occasion all of the 7 Deadly sins. I think about them alot.(Avarice, Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, Wrath)

4. I love to go on really hard hikes that I really can't do and always wonder while doing them if I am crazy.

5 I love to play and sing along to rock and roll songs really loudly in my car when I am driving. I like Pat Benetar's, "You're a Heartbreaker, Dream Maker,Love taker, don't you mess around with me".

6. I love to think about quantum physics and cosmology. This smallest things and the biggest things. Much needs to be resolved between the two.

7. In general, when I think about things in the abstract, I like animals more than people. This does not include my family and friends.

2007-11-23T16:23:00.000-08:00

Would the universe exist without humans? We are the consciousness of it all. We are not just passive observers, our minds are part of the creation. There is no way we can be objective about this. We are the laws of physics. This is no more wacky than all the other creation stories. A quantum world is just how we define things now. These are just thoughts for the day, that I will develop further.

2007-11-22T18:15:00.000-08:00

Simple faith isn't simple for me. I almost envy the people in my sister's church who accept the Bible without reservation. It is a child's faith, a faith that didn't go to college and have to go though the long period of doubt and questioning that I did. There was a time when I believed unquestionably, a blissful time of pre-critical naiveté. I think that now I am in a wonderful place of post-critical naivete. That is, I see the truth in it.. It is a document of amazing importance. It is the foundational literature of our culture. The old testament in particular was written by herders wandering in the desert. It is amazing. It is not unlike Shakespeare's histories, part myth, part history. I know that much of it is true, but not all is fact and that is a good thing. It doesn't have to be fact, it is parable, it is metaphor and as such it is beautiful. It was written in the language of poetry, of myth. Christ's importance to me is not that he is the son of God, it is that he taught us that we all were the sons and daughters of the same God. He tried to unite petty, waring tribes. It is ironic that it still isn't done and the battle is mainly in the place where Christ lived and did his work. I think we err horribly when we try to make the bible FACT, using the language of logos for a document written in the language of mytos. It would be like trying to say that a poem like TS Elliot"s Love Song of J Alfred Purfrock was fact. You sort of miss the point if you do.

2007-11-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

CORRECTION! For all the purist and spellcheckers out there, and you know who you are.. Thank you, I need a permanent one because spell check isn't enough, big band isn't a misspelling it is a typo. Why can't computers know what I want to say? They try to tell us every thing else, like what button to push or they stubbornly refuse to do anything. My last comment reads, BIG BAND, it should read BIG BANG and honestly the pun wasn't intended but does work.

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise him all creatures hear me low(?), Praise him above ye(what does this mean?) heavenly hosts, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost". I love the Holy Ghost best. He was a combination of Casper the Friendly Ghost, one of my favorite comics, and really scary Halloween ghosts which I love too. She was always a woman because it made no sense to me even as a wee child to have a totally masculine trinity. Everyone knows that it is Father, Mother and child. Why didn't they get this? How did Christianity become so misogynistic? When St Patrick went in to convert the heathen Irish the pagans insisted that there had to be a female god- head and so the Blessed Virgin arose to prominence and became the sweet ambassador for humans and God. God then became less wrathful (how did he get to be wrathful and not disobey one of his own 7 deadlies?) and became a God of love and redemption. Thank God for the Irish. One merely has to look at the art of the times to see what we were thinking about it all. God visually softened and didn't look so mean and judgmental. It is interesting to me how we went from cultures that had female deities to one that didn't like the idea very much. How did we change from a matrilineal society with female god-heads to a patriarchal one? Lets face it we wouldn't have civilization if women didn't demand it. We would still be marauding tribes, like most of the world still is since we don't have female deities. We need a balance here, the yin and the yang, the anima and the animus, republican and democrat, which to me represents the two world views, masculine and feminine. The eternal battle of the sexes played out in the nightly news. Go Hillary! The question then looms, will she just become another Athena woman like Margaret Thatcher, or really lead us into a more humane world. It is worth a try. That is the only real change, the other candidates are just business as usual.

2007-11-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

The Greeks called romantic love the "madness of the Gods." It is madness in a way but it serves an important function at every age. In children, like play, it is practice in courtship (from courtly love) and how to flirt and how to select a worthy partner. In teenagers it get a little more complicated since they have so much stuff going on and a madhouse of chemicals in their brains. This is where one probably makes ones first choices for good or ill. There are those who "went steady" and those who didn't and I think that that pretty much separates the world. I didn't, I had the madness of the God's crushes though and was bitterly unhappy when I wasn't "in LOVE. The most important question you can ask anyone is if they liked High School.

What's interesting to me is that romantic love is timeless. Young adults marry, etc but older people who have no plans to reproduce (one thinks of poor Sarah in the bible having Isaac at 60 or so, good God, But I digress) Romantic love, according to my sister's favorite anthropologist, Helen Fischer, sees the purpose of Romantic Love (my caps) as a "way of weeding out unsuitable mates,(or selecting inappropriate ones) focusing ones attention and forming a socially visible pair-bond".... that presumably will last a lifetime. Love among the ruins no doubt had an adaptive function in the olden days. If nothing else it energized them(us) and makes them happy and keeps them in a healthy relationship with their children, ie distracted but filled with love. Emotional support is good too and can make backaches and other infirmities more tolerable.

What gets us in trouble as a culture, I am sure you would agree, is that nemesis of all good taste and morals - Hollywood. What they have done for violence in this country they are doing for love as well. Making it casual, gratuitous, ubiquitous and unrestrained thus just another sport or form of entertainment.

2007-11-20T05:44:00.000-08:00

Another kind of love, one that flourished in medieval France and England was courtly love, a chaste love-more an ideal than reality. Love poetry flowered and men were nice to women. It was a necessary transition in the evolution of relationships, but romantic love has had consequences for modern society in that decisions are often made based on romantic ideals (do they drive a convertible) and not on who would make a good mate, provider, father/mother. Actually, our contemporary ideas of romantic love fall short of the ones below. I am running out of time, more later.

The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus.

The Twelve Chief Rules in Love

Thou shalt avoid avarice like the deadly pestilence and shalt embrace its opposite.
Thou shalt keep thyself chaste for the sake of her whom thou lovest.
Thou shalt not knowingly strive to break up a correct love affair that someone else is engaged in.
Thou shalt not chose for thy love anyone whom a natural sense of shame forbids thee to marry.
Be mindful completely to avoid falsehood.
Thou shalt not have many who know of thy love affair.
Being obedient in all things to the commands of ladies, thou shalt ever strive to ally thyself to the service of Love.
In giving and receiving love's solaces let modesty be ever present.
Thou shalt speak no evil.
Thou shalt not be a revealer of love affairs.
Thou shalt be in all things polite and courteous.
In practising the solaces of love thou shalt not exceed the desires of thy lover.

2007-11-19T05:11:00.000-08:00

There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be. Norman Mailer

Can sex lead us to holiness? Can sex be a transcendental experience? Most religions, eastern religions, seem to think so. It is hard to find anything in Christianity and the old Testament that would agree. The only place where I can find that it even hints at it is in Genesis 2 where Eve is made from Adams rib. The implied meaning being that man and woman are not complete without each other. But, the usual interpretation is that Eve is somehow less because of it. To me, Adam can't be whole without her. His relationship with her completes him and him her. I will write more later. I have to go swim now.

2007-11-18T05:35:00.000-08:00

What is Love? I thought Keats put it well. " Yourself--your soul--in pity give me all/withhold no atom's atom or I die." I think that describes the feeling but what IS it. Chaucer was right too though: "How we delude ourselves when we love. Love is blynd." Is love pure chemical delusion? A massive cocktail of dopamine and nor-epinephrine that makes us crazy and sends lovers like Paulo and Franchesca to an eternal embrace in the first level of Dante's hell? Is love worth it? The Bible adds insights to love too: For love is as strong as death./Its passions are as cruel as the grave/And its flashes of fire are the very flame of God. (The Song of Songs) This is the dark side of love clearly and there is a dark side which one typically ignores. There are consequences to incautious love that shape our lives, but then Love makes us incautious. Is the purpose of love to just get us crazy enough to mate and have children? Then there is lust, where does that fit in? Is love really just lust. Why don't I know this?

2007-11-17T06:07:00.000-08:00

The Seven Deadly Sins have attracted me one way or another for years and years. Still do. At one point I was afraid of them, then attracted to them and then practiced them, most of them anyway. Actually all of them. Wrath, anger was clearly the most destructive in my life but also the sin that most motivated me to take action to rid myself of it. Anger at what was happening to our wild lands in this state made me become involved with so many things: Reintroduction of endangered species, rescue of species and then the most active starting the Superstition Area Land Trust with my pal Rosemary and her sister Phyllis. Wrath has been very,very good to me. I can't say so much about the other's, Lust was always fun, but the consequences weren't always fun. The same with gluttony and sloth. Envy makes your crazy and so does greed. Pride makes people hate you. Which has led me to the whole idea of SIN. Sin isn't so much the act, it is the result of the act. The acts that go against the 7 deadlies or the 10 commandments are the very things that most often separate us from the Ground of our Being, our God, our community, ourselves. Sin is not so much an act as a state of mind caused by certain agreed upon acts. All the acts have an appropriate setting. Righteous Anger, stealing bread for your starving family, Killing in self-defense, etc. etc. aren't sins, because the acts don't cause separation. Of course, there are psychopaths who never experience remorse. What are they, then? Jimmy Carter admitted to Lusting in his heart and never heard the end of it. He didn't DO IT, people, he thought it? Apparently God and the media make no distinction.

The big 7: avarice envy, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath.

Name your poison. Which is your favorite?

2007-11-15T05:05:00.000-08:00

This is a letter to my friend Jim but I liked it so much I thought I would post it now that I have remembered my password. What do you think is the greatest gift your parents gave you that you are the most thankful for? My parents gave me so much, curiosity, love of knowledge, tenacity, joy, humor, but the thing I think that I am most grateful for is that they gave me Arizona. They gave me this state before it was on the fast track to becoming Los Angeles. When is was more wild than tame and filled with possibilities. When it was hard to love because there was no air conditioning, no freeways, just lonely 2 lane highways to other small towns. I learned to love the land and its creatures, to name them and know them. It has served me so well I just keep trying to give back to it, to take care of it. A sense of place it critical for me. I have lived many places, Europe, Latin America but I have always come home. The bones of my ancestors are here. They gave me everything.

2007-10-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

Hume said that the problem with knowledge was that the principles used in establishing factual knowledge cannot establish themselves. The are no verifiable general statements and the basis of science is non-scientific. The basis of life is non life. As in if you took yourself apart atom by atom and left it in a pile there would be no living material there. This is too much. How are we supposed to deal with this when what is, isn't? So if swarms of cells have intelligence and purpose how far can we take this, does a swarm of atoms have purpose and intelligence out side of living (sort of) things? Is the universe, which is a mass of atoms, have purpose and intelligence? That would mean it all is intelligent design, or not?

2007-10-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

Let's get serious here. There are overwhelming question to answer. The one I got yesterday from the sister was weather, whether consciousness is alive. According to Schrodinger they would be alive and not alive at the same time since we can't prove either. The quantum paradox. Nothing is anything until a scientist says it is.

2007-10-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, my sister and I reverted to our true selves and coe- wrote those blogs. It was fun and quite a therapy session. We should have done it years ago. Now that all of that is off my mind I can think about more important things, or maybe less important things, who knows. Are social relationship more or less important than the search for Divine Reality?? This IS important though. Here goes. There is a rule in physics that says "anything that can happen without violating a conservation law DOES happen. It is now believed that particles can and do form spontaneously in empty space out of nothing!!! But, they disappear so quickly their existence cannot be demonstrated. These particles (actually pairs of particles) are known as virtual particles. Is God a virtual god? Is God a virtual particle?

2007-10-27T12:41:00.001-07:00

IS YOUR LIFE OVER IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A DATE? Are we just useless appendages to nothing at all without the troubling presence of men on our arm? Are we Unitarian sisters?** Perhaps a better question is should we have become nuns?

There is a certain temptation, guided by the zealotry inherent in our genes -- inherited honestly from a line of ancestors who were ministers and saintly mothers. This temptation is to become a nun and work hard enough at it to become a saint, remembered for countless centuries only for our good acts and profound thoughts. This seems a better fate than sitting alone on a Saturday night, without a date, a fate worse than being burned at the stake before you became widely known for your saintly behavior. Everyone remembers Joan of Arc. Are these our two choices? Tied to a man, either a human one or a supernatural one?

**What do your get when you cross a Unitarian and a Jehovah witness? Some one who knocks on your door with nothing particular to say.

2007-10-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

As our mother told us to always say positive things about people, we sat here in front of the computer in silence to meditate and try to identify something positive about the golden boy, as the gold was largely just cheap, tawdry costume jewelry.

He is out of our life. That is positive.
Or as Bette Davis said when told of Joan Crawford's death: "My mother always told me to only say good of the dead. Joan Crawford's dead. Good."

Erase, Erase. He's not really dead, just dead to us.

2007-10-27T12:13:00.001-07:00

And another thing....

The really bad things that the golden boy did, however, occurred later when his incivility had reached the summit of perfection. He was aided in this pursuit by his wife, whose name is unutterable. She did love things, and that is a positive thing about her. She loved her hatreds. They were a perfect match. Their madness, cruelty, and insanity increased beyond measure when they found GOD!! That is when their behavior and beliefs became the golden mean, the standard, the measure against which they compared all others. We all failed miserably including our sainted mother whose worst fear was that none of he children would come to her funeral. THEY DIDNT SHOW UP. So, picture this, there is the coffin covered with flowers arranged by her grandchildren. There are the daughters, aunts, nephews, nieces,uncles, all sitting, weeping and waiting for them to appear. We knew who we were waiting for. Others were sitting there wondering why the funeral did not begin. They are lucky that I don't make the decisions about who rots in hell, because they would be first in line. Can't you see them wrapped in their piety, sitting in Hieronyemus Bosch's hell? It is ironic that they think they are the judges of peoples' worth and goodness.

Love, Annie and Katie

2007-10-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

PLEASE READ AND POST YOUR OWN GOLDEN BOY STORIES, EVEN IF YOU ARE A GOLDEN BOY.

Once upon a time, not so very long time ago, in the desert of the southwest, there were 2 little girls who hated their brother. It was not that he was such a bad brother, mind you. He only rented out his Mickey Mouse Classic Comics, after spending hours telling his sisters about all the hidden treasures within--that they would never see unless they rented the comic; chased his sisters around saying he was going to drop a lizard down the back of our dress, held "stores" and sold all his toys, including his rubber Mickey Mouse and then stole them back ad nauseum, and then taunted us with the name Ms Perfectform when we began to develop. His other job was to be the golden boy who could do no harm and be loved and indulged despite the fact that he was incapable of loving back. Later on, he flunked out of college too. He partied all the time, never went to class, and got tickets for speeding all the time. The cops used to wait behind trees as he was so predictable. The sisters didn't get a bike at all-- because they were girls. He got a red Schwinn and lorded it over his very young sisters. We could go on, but the point here is this formed our ideas about males--ideas that later were borne out by solid evidence. We are now both single and bitter. They are all golden boys waiting to be indulged. We refuse to do that. Our refusal has shaped all our relationships, or lack of them.
Signed, The Unworthy Ones, Katie and Annie

2007-10-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." Emily Dickinson..... Like publishing in my blog. I am too distracted to think much less to write it down. I wrote a check for $24,400 when the bill was only $240! That is startling and a warning to stop the war that I am fighting with myself and sign a peace treaty or at least a cease fire.

2006-12-04T05:54:00.000-08:00

Are intense emotions, like fear located in the mind or the body? It seems that you feel fear fist in your gut and then later you decide if it is fear or just gas. For example, if I see a lion, I don't think there is a lion, maybe I should run, I get the message or my legs get the message as does my gut. It is only later that my neocortex says," WOW! that was a lion." Does that mean that people who don't have normal body functions, say a quadriplegic, don't feel fear? Surely they do. But how do they react to it? How do they feel it if they can't feel?

2006-11-26T06:31:00.000-08:00

"The living language is like a cow-path: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change."

E.B. White said this and I think it helps explain a lot of things. It seems to me most arguments/discussion I get into involve those who describe reality as they see it, be it religion or language and those who proscribe it. That is to say, they talk about how it is supposed to be. The problem is is that neither are wrong and both sides think the other one is. Clearly the problem is not the idea or the word it is the pertinacity of the of the believer. Or as Chaucer put it so well, ""A man is pertinacious when he defends his folly and trusts too greatly in his own wit.
Geoffrey Chaucer; Canterbury Tales: Explicit Secunda Pars Penitentie;1387-1400 (Translation: Walter W. Skeat).

I will agree that at it extreme, the descriptive ones have helped lead us into a state of moral irrelevance and decadence. The rule of the other extreme lead us to fascism and big brother. True believers are the problem. But somehow it seems we need them to solve the problems that other true believers create.

2006-11-24T06:48:00.000-08:00

I am board with atheists. Why are they always such whiners? And so angry? If they would describe to me the god they don't believe in, I probably wouldn't believe in 'him" either. I think we need to do some defining here. Is it god they don't like, or religion? To me they are mutually exclusive and one has each for very different reasons.

Church/religion
I go to church infrequently but find a kind of comfort in it when I do. It is a kind of reunion with the ancestors, so to speak. I dislike the new stuff, when the minister plays a guitar and sings show tunes. I like the tradition and as far as I am concerned that is the main reason to go. The community of faith things works for me too. I would like church if it weren't all about the bible. It is amazing when you think about it though bunches of people all gathered reading and believing a text that is basically a myth, not that different from the Iliad, or stories of Hercules, part history, part fantasy, part hope. I don't like the idolatry inherent in utter belief in a book. When does religion become pernicious? When does faith and hope morph into my way or the highway?

God
I like god and I understand that sometimes people need help finding a way to connect with the infinite. Somebody said, "I want God to mean the vast ceaseless creativity of the only universe we know of, ours." So yes, I believe in god but I think we need to separate it from religion. It is true believers in creed that cause so many problems, not believers in god. So how do we do that?

2006-11-17T06:26:00.000-08:00

How is it possible that screaming kids didn't destroy all possibility for humans to survive when we were vulnerable to so many predators like when we lived in caves? I was at dinner in a restaurant and there were two kids who were out of control. It seems to me that natural selection would have taken care of brats a long time ago. I just had to get that off my mind and your socio biologist out there can answer it for me. I am more interested in the Super theory of everything. Actually until I read the comments on my last blog I didn't even think that all the sciences should be united somehow as I naively thought they were. Doesn't subatomic physics do that? When one gets down to the fundamental particle of all matter what else do you need? It doesn't matter if it is a rock or a cell. Frankly, I don't see a problem. Think small.

2006-11-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

I am trying to understand IT and create a philosophical theory of everything. I am starting with quantum mechanics, and cosmology(not to be confused with cosmetology). The largest and the smallest.

In astrophysics, dark matter is matter that does not emit or reflect enough electromagnetic radiation (such as light, X-rays and so on) to be detected directly, but whose presence may be inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter.* This makes perfect sense to me. Any rational person would say so. Physicist theorize that certain phenomenon, like dark matter, quarks, strings,etc exist because they can see evidence of their existence. It is interesting because I infer the existence of an awesome divine presence because of the evidence I see of its existence. They have data and I have mystery.

The deepest problem in theoretical physics is harmonizing the theory of general relativity which describes gravitation and applies to large-scale structures (stars, galaxies, super clusters), with quantum mechanics which describes the other three fundamental forces acting on the microscopic scale.* ( I think they mean the strong and weak forces (these are the nuclear forces. The strong force holds the quarks together. The weak force is about nuclear decay), and electromagnetism.) This is all I know now but I think I know this. Who knows. thanks for listening.

The four forces or interaction that we know about are, in the order of the most powerful to the least: The Strong force, Electromagnetism, the weak force and gravitation. Actually, it may be: gravitation and then the weak force. No I think I am right.

*Wikipedia

2006-08-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

The primal cause of the environmental degradation that we are seeing in the world today is a direct result is MONOTHEISM. How, you ask can the idea of one god do all this? Early monotheist eschewed the animism in the earlier pantheistic religions and as such perpetuated the idea of the separation of mankind from nature. We officially were better than everything else and in fact were give cart blanch by our godhead to have dominion over it all and take over, as it were. Not good. As if that were not enough we have to add European RATIONALISM to the mix after the Renaissance which gives us the means to really exploit nature. Descartes' idea of dualism didn't help either. Move on to American CAPITALISM, consumerism and materialism and POW!! you've got it. Everything is about entertainment and the individualism.

In the last twenty years we can add millenarianism as if things weren't bad enough. A result of fundamentalist thinking, millenarianism basically causes people not to care about things like environment destruction since the world is coming to an end anyway and complete breakdown of the environment will only help it along. It is not a big help to have our major seats of power occupied my people who think like this.

Surely, a second coming is at hand, surly we can change thousands of years of thinking about our relationship with the earth. Can it truly be our destiny to destroy the earth and ourselves in the process?

2006-06-21T06:06:00.000-07:00

Life is fragile. I almost forgot that and then BLAM!! I get gentle reminders from the universe. Friends die, get sick, get arrested. A guy I used to know was arrested for putting a camera in his 14 yr. old stepdaughters bathroom. Rot in hell, bastard. At 14 the very least you deserve is a little privacy. A sculptor I know Louis Jemenez, was killed when one of his huge monumental sculptures fell on him and severed his femoral artery and he bled to death. Killed by the art that was the out pouring of his very soul. What irony is that? Another friend's husband was diagnosed with a really fast growing brain tumor. Another with bladder cancer. The forests are burning..... ad nauseam. Now somehow in all this pain and suffering we are duty bound to find joy and peace. Action is the only answer. Reach out to those who need it. Compassion is everything. Remember those mirror neurons.

2006-06-20T06:09:00.000-07:00

Some of us are proscriptive and some of us are descriptive. I see this in language a lot. There are those who refuse to accept changes in expression, grammar, etc. and "go ballistic'' when it happens. They are the ones, you know them, who are always correcting your spelling and grammar. The French even have an institution whose job it is is to protect the Language which may very well kill it in the end as it will become obsolete without new words. I have a friend who gives me a lecture if I use the expression, "an acre of land" as the word land is redundant. Doesn't matter that that is what everyone says, they are wrong. You can't say anxious when you mean eager either as that is the wrong usage. These are the proscriptive ones. The descriptive ones, like me, merely describe what is happening to language or culture and really don't judge it all that much. Things change and I am interested in how they change what will be the consequences of that change in the long run. For example will English be watered down so much by all the new words coming in that it will morph into something else? Will it be made stronger because of it? We have more words than any other language, they borrow from us. One of our major exports is words.

2006-06-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

Around 800-200 BCE in all the main regions of the civilized world, people begin to create new ideas about god. Interestingly, they all developed in very similar ways even though they had no real contact with each other. Individual tribal gods of local areas were replaced with the ONE GOD. Many things were happening at this time, power was shifting to the marketplace from the kings and priests which led to a new prosperity. Perhaps the most important thing to develop at this time though was the idea of the INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE. It is not without a certain irony that we develop the idea of one god just when we start figuring out that we are separate individuals. God developed in "a market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism". It would seem that the opposite would be true. If we think religious wars are bad now imagine what it would have been like if each of us had our own individual god. So who cares? except that is what the most noted theologians think we are going through now. These are the best of times and the worst of times. We are on the verge of another great change in our view of our place in the universe.

2006-06-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

I have to add a new film to my favorites of all time.

THE MAGDALENE SISTERS (2002). it is based on a true story about young Irish women who were virtually enslaved in convents during the 1960's just before the Catholic Church lost its strangle hold over the people of Ireland (which is a whole other story). The physical and psychological damage the nuns and priests inflicted on these unfortunate girls was shocking beyond belief. Deserted by their families and accused of sexual misconduct they were given to the nun for atonement. Unable to speak to anyone in the outside world beyond the gate they were imprisoned with no release date. There were actually several older grey haired women there. It was actions like this by corrupt people of power that destroyed the social order. The rest of us in the 60's were revolting against that abuse. Perhaps it has gone to far, but who do you trust? The government? Church? Schools? what are our institutions that can sustain us. They are all broken and until we find new ones we are doomed to disorder. Entropy rules!

The Magdalene Convents were closed in 1996.

2006-06-17T06:34:00.000-07:00

So if, as Paul Tillich says, the idea of a personal god that keeps tinkering with the universe, not to mention our personal lives, who is mean and jealous, is absurd. ( that is really a germanic sentence, sorry) Who wants a tyrant. Who wants just another petty being like us? Atheism is justified. We, since the beginning of it all, have had gods. It seems we are hard wired for it. If we are to create a new god what would we look for? What good things have gods given us in the past? What was so important about god that we actually evolved with the idea? Is it possible to believe in god and belong in our contemporary intellectual world? With very few exceptions, people who have a personal/tyrant god are not really intellectually engaged in the world. They seem to exist in a "god spell". Is this good? Well one thing that results is a cultural war. Exactly what we have now. Apparently, live and let live are irrelevant concepts when you know you are right and of course both sides are right.

2006-06-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

We have mirror neurons that fire in our brains when we see someone doing certain things, like smiling, for example. Even though we are not smiling our smiling centers fire in our brains. Sort of a cool monkey see monkey do type thing. They have the same neurons I presume since so much of our brain are similar. I think we are pretty much equal with chimps, brain cell for brain cell. They don't have as much myelin, the stuff that coats the neuron though. Apparently that is important. I read this at 4 am so I can't remember why. I'll reread it and relate it tomorrow. Anyway, these mirror neurons have captured my interest. Could this be the beginning of compassion? Is this how we can "know" what another feels because our neurons are firing at the same time when we witness something? Apparently Autistics lack this ability to one degree or another. That makes perfect sense. What is interesting to me and what I can't figure out is why we have what seems like a genetic tendency in some people to behave in ways that preclude their leaving descendants? Like autism. How has that survived? One would think something like that would have been selected out but natural processes long ago. There must have been some advantage to being autistic. One never knows. For example. sickle cell anemia, if processed correctly on a genetic level, causes immunity to malaria. Quite an advantage. Too much of a good thing is not an advantage however. Life is cool. Life is good.

2006-06-15T07:09:00.001-07:00

The ancients judged their gods on their effectiveness.** I think that is a good idea. Is your god effective? If not fire him and get another one just like your ancestors did. What do you want in a god? Grace, manna, interpersonal interaction or a really angry belligerent one who is the Boss with a capital B? Totalitarian gods are quite popular now. I think my god is effective but then again I am not opposed to borrowing someone else god occasionally if it seems appropriate. I figure manna is good and if some other god gives better manna especially when I am in that god's territory then all the better. My god understands that and actually encourages it. Naturally, this doesn't work if you have a jealous god like the Israelites did. That was very problematic for them. The Hindu's pretty much fired their gods and hired religious teachers who are considered higher than the gods they fired. Apparently if you fire them they are still around. Sort of like our corporate CEO's. I wonder if some of them are in prison?

** Data from this blog courtesy, Karen Armstrong's, The History of God"

2006-06-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

2006-06-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

Why I am a postmodernist with modernist tendencies.

"Postmodernism is all about the process. Art is process, not product. Even the definition of postmodern is process. In this, one experiences the breakdown of language, hence words like, "gay" which can mean happy, homosexual,(or the new meaning flimsy). Meaning is relative to both perspective and experience. Meaning is process as well (and morphs with unerring frequency daily.) There is no reliability in anything, thus anarchy replaces the hierarchy prevalent with the moderns. Hierarchal patterns are so much easier to comprehend." Ellen Bates ( parentheticals are mine)

It seems to me that with the moderns we begin to see the breakdown of the hierarchal system. It failed. God, the top of the system failed us most hence he is dead or in a forced state of perpetual resurrection by the religious radicals. I picture a comatose godhead tied with golden chains to his throne with the minions preying him into consciousness. Nothing worked anymore or as Yeats said," the center cannot hold, things fall apart". But interestingly enough, human in their amazing capacity to adapt, created an order in the non-order and began to define what the non ordered order was and it was postmodernism. Chaos rules and it is good. We will just redefine Chaos and all will be well. Life is good.

2006-06-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

Do we have to love that which we don't understand? I read that somewhere, Camus', The Plague, I think. Do we have to love god? I have been thinking about our relationship with god. If we look back over the centuries and think about god's role in art in literature we see radical changes. From the bible to Samuel Beckett, it becomes clear that our belief in a loving, compassionate, all powerful god is disintegrating, slowly but inexorably. Is it knowledge that weakens god, just like in the Garden of Eden? Get knowledge, loose god. It seems that way. In the modernist writers, Camus, Beckett, Joyce god is there but it is a failed god no longer loving. He is, at best, mean and resented. Now we barely see or hear about him except in the born-again books like The Left Behind series and all sorts of books and films about the anti-christ. This new god seems to be getting even for our infidelity to his greatness and good and evil battle again for dominance. This is medieval construct. Can we create a new God that embraces all the science that seems to deny his very existence? Do we need to? There is a serious battle waging over God or no god so I would imagine some kind of second coming is at hand.

2006-06-07T07:04:00.000-07:00

I look up Yeats after I wrote my blog yesterday and rediscovered the MODERNIST, those deeply alienated, isolated, self analytical souls that formed what is now our postmodern world. I am not sure I like being defined as the thing that came after the other thing. I have never gotten a really good definition of postmodern other than to say that in art it is the garbage (my word) of all the movements of the past. So in any given piece of art you may see impressionistic, gothic and rococo influences all mushed together. Anything goes and the stranger and more anti art it is the better. Architecture is a good example, with the neo-coneyisland influences on lots of postmodern buildings. Neo-coneyisland is so preferable to the cold heartless bauhaus school of modernism with it icy steel and glass. But then that was just a reaction to all the bricka-braque of the prewar structures. Everything is just a reaction to something else. World War I, which I think was the cause and effect of the modernist movement was just a reaction to the excesses of the monarchical system in Europe. WWII was just a reaction to WWI and the harshness of the treaty of Versailles which was a reaction to the fact that everyone hated the Germans. The Germans are interesting to me. Talk about possessing the greatest and the worst. The most divine music and poetry and the bloodiest wars and most heinous crimes against their citizens all in one nation. Germany should be the poster child of humanity and its history sent up in all the space ships so other civilizations can be warned about how unstable and reactionary we are but also how pure and divine we can be. Is Germany the way it is because they were never really conquered by the Romans and never had that early civilization and uniting influence? They picked up on the aggressive militant aspects of the Romans though. Unity is not their strong suite.

Are you a postmodernist or a modernist? I am a postmodernist and I will explain why later.

2006-06-06T06:33:00.000-07:00

June 6, 2006. 6/6/06 The sign of the beast. It puts me in mind of Yeat's "THE SECOND COMING". I thought I would share the parts I remember with you. The poem is about the second coming of Christ which if one thinks of it in Hegelian terms would be about the coming of the antithesis or the antichrist. I think this says it all even with the forgotten parts.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold:
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
the best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

......somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Joan Didion wrote a book called "Slouching toward Bethlehem". I did a painting called "Things fall Apart"

2006-06-05T07:12:00.000-07:00

If I wanted to create an institution that taught young males responsibility and encouraged them to be good fathers and men in the community I would create something akin to Mormonism. I base this on one visit to a Mormon church yesterday for a baby blessing. It was interesting in that the blessing only involved the fathers and their male friends and relatives. One can assume here that the mother is already tied to the infant and it is the father who needs to feel that bond and publicly accept responsibility. As the father holds the infant each man touches him/her. The father gives a spontaneous blessing. He states what his responsibilities are and what his hope for the infant are. It was at times moving and tearful. There was lots of honoring of the ancestors and a blessing of the soul that this child possesses. Life and death are eternal and ongoing. From a postmodern feminist perspective it was totally sexist. From the point of view of someone witnessing the decay of a grand society, very necessary.

2006-06-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

How much free Will is the average human capable of taking responsibility for? Does free Will only work when you really don't have free Will? Is it an illusion anyway you look at it? Does one have choice within the constraints of a society where there are strict rules of conduct? Is rebelling against rules freedom? One would think the purest state of freedom is with anarchy but ironically without society choice would be determined by biology i.e. who is strongest, meanest, etc and of course by who get eaten. Is there true choice in anarchy and chaos?

2006-05-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

I think the question for us now is, "What in the hell do we do?" It is all fine and good talking about ancient traditions and how they exist because they worked but we are watching them crumble before our very eyes and be replaced by fire breathing, hate-mongering fundamentalist. I do realize that fundamentalism is mainly a reaction to the libertine attitudes we are seeing today but frankly neither of these extremes appeals to me nor do I think that they will work in the long run. I do not want to be a fundamentalist nor do I want to be part of the other radical extreme. Maybe this is the way that cultures find balance but it seems to me there has got be be a better way. A thoughtful, reasoned, caring, compassionate way to find balance in a Mondo Cane world. Perhaps the only solution is to let the battle, the armageddon as it were, proceed and let the hate-mongers out-monger the whore-mongers or visa versa. Neither world is very appealing to me. Non servium**, as Steven in Yeat's Portrait of a Artist as a Young Man said. I will not serve.

**This is also what Satan said when he left Heaven. Satan's evil was that he wanted to rule mankind with totalitarian extremes thus eliminating choice. The irony here is obvious. Choice is our salvation and our destroyer, but we have always known that.

2006-05-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

Is the catholic church on the way out? Are they capable of making the changes necessary to move out of the 4th century and join the rest of the world (most of whom are living in the 10th century)? What would they need to change? I do like the outfits and would hate to see the loss of all the ritual and pomp but lets face it do flowing gold lame gowns on the priesthood really work now? In the past I am sure they denoted power and wealth, but today? I don't know. It is more like something you would see in a transvestite bar. Forgive me here, that was harsh, but sometimes the obvious truth needs to be written. Is lightening going to strike me now?

There is a lot of hubbub over the Da Vinci code but really that is all so minor in the face of all the charges of pedophiliac priests and the ensuing grand medieval coverups. Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce, one of those seers, made a prophesy about the end of the papacy. Apparently, according to one of them. This is the last pope. Seer's aside I think the catholic church is in trouble and the Da Vinci Code just points that out in glaring detail. It really doesn't matter if it is 'true' or not that is not the point. The point is is that the world wearies over blatant abuses of power in the hands of our holy men. It is one thing to cause wars and lead crusades and bloody inquisitions as church did in the past it is quite another to abuse the weakest among their flock and suffer no consequences. They are as protected as our sports "heros". That for another time.

2006-05-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

"Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality." Bill Bryson. (Subatomic fate and temperament conundrum
)
Other cool metaphors that help me to understand science courtesy Bryson are:

1. If an atom where the size of a cathedral than the nucleus would be only the size of a fly but the fly would be a thousand times heavier.

2. The Big Bang represents a kind of transition phase, where the universe went from a form we can't understand to one we almost can. (It is what caused the transition that is the question that looms)

3. A singularity is when you take everything in creation squeezed into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimension at all. (Then apparently it pops like a pimple in the sun and you have the big bang.)

4. DNA's job is to make DNA upon which all life depends but DNA is not alive. You have about 6ft squeezed in to almost every cell. Each length of DNA is composed of some 3.2 billion letters of coding. That is why you are you and not an Owl or your next door neighbor.

5. Zinc oxidizes alcohol. (Hangover cure??) Cobalt is necessary for the creation of vitamin B12. (Also for the creation of beautiful skies in painting.)

6.

2006-05-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

Hermann Hesse said that Fate and temperament were one and the same thing. When I read this 30 years or so while traveling on a train somewhere in Europe,I agreed with it. I felt it in my bones. I knew I was following my fate. Now, my wiser older self questions it (along with a lot more things). We may be the person our moods make us but we still have the keys to change, don't we? Are we doomed to being a high school jerk our entire lives? This idea goes along with the guy who said, "We are what we think about all day". What does that make me? A quark? I think about them all day. I think about how when I see something that seems solid that it is not, that it is tiny little quarks moving madly around. Frankly, I am amazed that we can see things as solids at all. I also think about this: if I took my body apart atom by atom I would have a pile of stuff that was never living but if you put it together it becomes a living thing, me!! In other words we are the sum of our non living parts that are not solid at all but whirling around in their own little universe. Do they care about us? Are these tiny subatomic particle/waves God?

Then there is string theory which finally begins to make sense of all of it (except for the math part)

2006-05-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

-Albert Einstein

Is science the most precious thing we have? What about faith, art, government?? Now the question looms, am a woman of science or a woman of faith? Are those the only two possibilities? I like to think I am of both. I personally don't have a problem trusting in both. In fact, I find solace in both which is probably more to the point and more important. What do you trust? Hard science that can be tested and tested ad infinitum or that feeling deep in your gut that says no matter what they test there is still something else out there. Something they will never find and never be able to test. And that thing guides you and gets you through stuff you never thought you could get through. Is this temporal lobe delusion?

What I like about science.
l. I like it that the biggest thing we know, the cosmos is made up of the smallest thing we know, quarks.
2. I like that we are all made up of the same stuff and what made the stars made us. We are one with the cosmos.

What I don't like about science.
1. Once they got into quantum physics it ceased being elegant. I think we should have one fundamental particle from which everything is made and it should have an elegant name. And what is this about Up, Down, Charmed, Strange quarks? What were they smoking??

What I like about faith.
1. I like that it is such a subjective, personal thing that can get you through things that you had no idea you could get through.
2. I like thinking about God/The Cosmos/particle physics and seeing how they fit.

What I don't like about faith.
1. I don't particularly like religion. They seem to be faith based but they are really oligarchies that rule by guilt and fear. They are secret male societies. When faith seeks secular power it goes bad fast.

P.S. I forgot how to spell check on this so would someone please edit this?

2006-05-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

I am baaaack. I will begin again to share my thought with the cybor people. It is an interesting concept to put your thoughts down and not ever know who reads them if anyone. I have to get to work now but I will leave you with this thought about work and art by W.B. Yeats."....but for the creation of art work is both indispensable and insufficient."

2005-12-14T16:22:00.000-08:00

In trying to re-bond with my computer, now named "HAL", as on, "Open the pod bay doors HAL". I have forced myself to return to my blog as I have many issues that I must discuss, chief among them is TRUST. Is TRUST about doubt or skepticism? If we don't trust someone or something does that mean we have doubts about that person or thing or does it just mean we are skeptical. I know this: doubt hurts, skepticism doesn't. What is the difference? One thing for sure is that Doubt cannot be removed by rational thought, skepticism can. Isn't skepticism the basis of science. Can we stop doubting?

One either believes in God or doesn't. Doubts or doesn't doubt. Clearly we can't use rational thought to know for sure. There is too much Chaos that separates us from knowing that truth. I think about it because I want to hedge my bets. Better to embrace the God Head than to and burn in a horrid endless hell. Actually, I don't believe in hell but am reminded of a great line from Marlow's " FAUST". Faust asks Mesostopheles, " If you are the devil what are you doing here? How can you leave Hell". Mesostophles replies, "This is Hell and I am here". Is there any doubt that we experience daily our heaven and hell? We recreate our paradise, or at least try to, and then Doubt enters and we go to our own Hell.

Please discuss if any of you are out there still. I can't blame you if you doubted my return. Special thanks here to my family and Geode who kept bugging me to return.

2005-11-12T14:36:00.000-08:00

Is the computer God? Was it an act of divine malice or mercy that took my computer away? These are a few if the overriding questions that bedeviled me while I morned alone outside of the world of the blessed, in hell or more aptly, in non cybor-space. I remembered reading the theologian Paul Tillich years ago and marveling over his idea of sin as separation. He posited that sin was separation from the ground of ones being, i.e. God, from ones self and from ones people. Sin was not so much an act as a state of being. I felt this separation and reacted to it as any normal outcast would. I mourned, I cajoled, I bargained, I felt sick. We need another level in Dante's hell for the DISCONNECTED. For those who for whatever reason, do not have computers are in hell somewhere between those who believed in nothing and those who are in hell because they lived before the computer was invented. Another hard thing I learned from this was that God is a male. A female computer would never just betray you like that. She would never just be there one minute and then leave without so much as a, "So long Kid". She would want to talk it over before she left you. She would drop all sorts of hints that she was going to do something bad. I am afraid of my computer now and every time I turn it on I know that something bad can happen that I don't know how to fix. Is the computer satan?

2005-11-12T07:28:00.000-08:00

Well I am back and my computer works better than ever. But believe me I have been in cybor hell. I have a cold sore to prove it. I know no one is out there because I have been gone so long but I will be back in full force soon. I am just in a hurry today to get stuff done and I am not used to writing. Been reading a lot so hang in there if you are there.

2005-11-07T05:45:00.000-08:00

This is a test. Can you read this. The computer is still on strike. I have trust issues now.

2005-10-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

I am in techno hell with the computor so excuse me not writing for a while. The machine is going to the shop and get fixed because I can' face talking for 3 more hours to tech guys on my cell phone which will cost me $$$$. At least this works. I think. More later.

2005-10-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

2005-10-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

Shall it be male or female say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
-Dylan Thomas

We are all females until mom gives us a shot of testosterone or estrogen, as the case may be, and our fate is sealed at least in terms of which sex we will be. Well maybe. There are several ways we can be male of female; physically, genetically, and of course, the most complex of them all, socially. It is in this wondrous womb of life, while we are drenched in hormones, that lots and lots of the wiring in our brains take place too. A little too much testosterone after I got my estrogen bath and I get more male wiring? I wonder if its a simple as that? Is that what makes tomboys, lesbians? Or are these things political choices? Frankly, I didn't have a choice about being a tomboy, prissy girl was not an option. Did my mom do this to me with her raging hormones at the time?

We had gills too. We must go through the entire evolutionary process while we are being manufactured. It is only too bad that we have no real memories of it and that memories come later after all the really good stuff in done.

2005-10-17T06:21:00.000-07:00

Are we hard wired to have lots of selves? I don't know about you but I don't just have one personality. I have several to deal with the myriad things I have to do in life, like be an artist hermit, a socialite ( I do have to go out and be cool and interesting on occasion), a demanding activist/teacher, business woman, a shy, meek and humble human being when confronted with things that intimidate me ( I hide this well). These are the basic ones, Oh yes, there is the torch singer, Julie London type too. When I was in college they got so confusing that I lined them all up and gave them names and job descriptions. It helped a lot. After that it didn't seem to be a conflict anymore. If I need to do something really social or political I merely send Justine who handles all of that stuff. Phoebe Phoenix is the weird painter. Moana is the torch singer, etc. etc. I suggest for all the bipolar, schizoids out there that they try this as it can be so helpful. By the way, the shy, meek one doesn't have a name because she doesn't want one. Believe it or not she is, no doubt, the basic one that got squashed by all the others when I realized that shy, meek make life way too difficult. Since she is shy and meek she lets the others take over and is just along for the ride and quite happy from what I hear. We don't let her out too often and we cover for her well. Maybe she is Anne? Maybe I need to get to know her better?

The therapist(patient) is in if you have any comments.

2005-10-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

Is there a god or a God? I don't know but as a philosopher friend of mine said once, when on trial for minor crimes, "I am obsessed with the question". If there is then how do we begin to define It? Certainly, the gruff but kindly father of our childhood,, with his constant nagging and list making, will no longer suffice, nor will all the varied experimental/conceptual gods of our hippy and perhaps drug induced youth. As mature adults our God must too be mature. Is there a god gene. Time magazine thinks God is hard wired into our brain. Of course, that doesn't mean there is one just that we have to create one. That leads to the overwhelming question, Why do we need a god? How has our survival depended on our continued insistence that there is one? Is God dead? Is God religion? or are god and religion mutually exclusive? God IS, we create religion to try and formulate and define god, which is fruitless and impossible. Anything great enough to be my god, has to be beyond my comprehension and certainly none of the gods being defined now fit that bill. If I can articulate god then it isn't. Poetry and art come closest to being successful and at least they are pleasing. Science does to but they aren't trying to which makes them the closest in my book.

2005-10-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

Lots of my women friends think men don't feel and lots males (they are not my friends) think women don't think. Remember when it was so popular to demean women in public. The tables have turned, I think. Now women make fun of men the same way. Any way, I think males feel, but that they just don't know it. There are exceptions, obviously but when we think in terms of the extreme of the male/female mind the differences are remarkable. I think one of the huge reasons is that women's emotional center (amygdala) is hard wired to her speech centers and that connections isn't as strong in males. We know what we feel and we can articulate it and share it with others, sometimes ad nauseum but overall I think that is a good thing because it makes us more compassionate and able to understand others pain and happiness. I once read that the extreme male mind was the autistic. Talk about disengaged. No compassion, no communication. Fortunately, there are degrees of this behavior. But I am sure all of us have known males that are more antisocial than social. What then is the sociopath and the psychopath who is the extreme male mind but with the added dynamic to not just ignore others but a desire to hurt them. What is that? Is that just a confusion of the natural drive to hunt and mate. Since most serial killer crimes are male against female it does give one pause.

2005-10-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

Billions and billions of years ago I think that a large one celled plant/amimal ate a smaller one celled plant/animal and the little one didn't die. It in fact became part of the big cell adding more complex functions to it and maybe even its mitochondria. I think this because mitochondria has its own DNA and they divide independently from the main cell. I think this would make a great basis for a sci fi movie. A big space creature comes and eats us. We don't die but live inside the monster functioning independently from it but adding greatly to its own evolution, not to mention our own. It could be a happy, upbeat movie or a real disgusting, depressing one. Either way I would like to see it.

Mitochondria are the power plant in our cells converting candy bars into energy. Without them we would all have chronic fatigue syndrome. You get all your mitochondria from your mom because your dad uses all his up trying to power the tail of the sperm. I know, I don't like to think about my father's sperm either but this is us and it must be important. This alone makes a great case for a matrilineal system, doesn't it?

I think it further reflects the huge differences between males and females. Males use up all their energy on one thing and we never use ours up. This seems especially apparent in sexual reproduction because when they are finished, things just get going for us. This energy expenditure lasts for the next 30 years or so. Actually, as long as offspring are alive they constantly need something and it is our job to give it to them or feel guilty.

Tomorrow more about male/female difference and guaranteed to make someone upset.

2005-10-10T06:23:00.000-07:00

As a mental exercise I am studying the the largest thing we know, the universe and the smallest living thing we know, the cell. The macrocosm and the microcosm. Cell are fundamentally fascinating. If you take a cell and put it in a petrie dish it will become like an amoeba and adapt to being a one celled creature even though it has all the information to make a new me or you or an oak tree, whatever its DNA says. It will continue to do what we do, use energy, grow, reproduce, etc. It is amazing. It means we are probably really just an "ant colony" but under on binding and ants are really one organism but they are all loose and running around. The largest cell in the world is the yolk of an ostrich egg and the longest is the nerve cell of a giraffe which can be 10 feel long. Cells are adaptable. We can learn from them.

Get this! The observable universe is l,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (l with 24 zeros). In language this is a million million million million miles. In mental comprehension it is really really big. We describe this universe with two theories that are not quite adequate so we are looking for a unified theory. This creates a certain paradox according to Stephen Hawking and this is soooo interesting. "If there really were a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions - so the THEORY ITSELF WOULD DETERMINE THE OUTCOME OF OUR SEARCH FOR IT". This is philosophy, this is theology. No wonder the religious right is so upset. Science is taking their job. The best thing to do obviously is not to run away from it, but to embrace it. All the right wing universities should open the biggest astrophysics departments around and hire all the best people and find the unified theory (God) and they could own it and make up their own myths about it so they could control everyone like they seem to want to do. I, at least have respect for the catholics in that they have quite an active Jesuit astrophysics search going on. They even apologized to Gallalio(sic). It is never too late, I say. They have their own telescopes. They have one here in Arizona, on Mr Graham. We call it the Pope Scope.

Hint for tomorrow. We may be the result of a larger one celled animal eating a smaller one.

2005-10-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

I heard yesterday that they have a name for the new planet they discovered in the Kaiper belt, out beyond Pluto (which might not be a planet). It, or rather she, is named Xena after the warrior princess of TV fame. This has to be a first. A planet named after a TV character. That's not all, Xena has a moon and, you guessed it, it's called Gabriella, after Xena's TV side kick. This opens up all sorts of possibilities now that we don't have to name our planets after the pantheon of worn out Greek and Roman gods we can use movie stars and/or fictional characters. Actually it would be better to be able to name actual stars after the real movie stars but I think we should stick to our solar system with our heros and not name someone else's sun say, Brad Pitt. Although Ringo Starr would be sort of cute, don't you think? We have lots of possibilities here since the guy who found Xena said he was sure there were at least 20 more new planets out there. Lots and lots of names. I vote for Elvis (the young one) for the name of the next big discovery. What about you?

2005-10-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

Rocks are easier than People or any living thing for that matter even a one celled ameba . There is a certain comfort in geology since there are really on 3 type of rocks to remember and they can go back and forth being one or the other. For example, at one point a rock can be igneous and then metamorphic at some other time a billion years later. There are tons of complex things to know about life forms the least of which is that they are all made up of cells that have molecules that reproduce them. Think about enzymes, catalyst that are not changed by the chemical reaction they cause. How is that possible? Then we can get into the complex behavior of various types of life and how they react to each other and to the world. Zowie! I can see why people eschew biology in favor of geology. Take a nice drive to a road cut on a New England autumn day, pick up a few rocks and analyze them in the comfort of a lab. No Jane Goodall's there, spending a life time sitting in a jungle with a bunch of apes trying to understand them.

I wrote this after thinking about how much I love rocks. It is really shallow though but I will publish it anyway as that hasn't seemed to stop me before. The real trouble with geology is that it is almost impossible to get a straight answer from a geologist. Ask one some time, "what kind of rock is this?: and you will get way too much information about it when all you wanted to know was something like,"It's granite, or slate or Gold (even better)."

2005-10-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

Things in life that bother me. This is my new list. I am having trouble accepting the concept of invisible light. I mean, isn't the whole idea of light that it is visible. Light is just that - light. Without it nothing's visible. So, now at this late date I must accept the idea that radio waves and MICROWAVES ! are light, they are just invisible. Please. Who says so? I have just come to accept the concept that waves are also particle and now I have to grasp this light thing. Visible light is great as it is color and color is something I love and understand on lots of different levels. Did you know, for example, that the English language has the most words for color, some 3000 plus, more than any language. I think we can make some assumptions about English speakers from this. We like color and it is very meaningful to us. Maybe we are even more sensitive to color than say the Germans or the French. Although, the French do quite well with it. I wonder how many words for color the Eskimo have? I remember hearing that they had hundreds of words for snow. I have one word for snow. There was a tribe in Africa that had red, green, blue and brown. That's it. Miners came and taught them yellow so they could find the yellow stones that had diamonds in them.

2005-10-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

I remember reading this really cool thing about the levels of the brain. The old brain, the first one we got when we just had crawled out of the primordial swamp, the reptilian brain, controls the heartbeat and breathing and essential stuff that if we didn't have we wouldn't be here. As we evolved we got the second layer, the emotional brain, or the Limbic system which was essential to forming relationships with other people and places, etc. If we didn't have it we might still be here but we would be a bug. Then we got the neocortex which is the thinking brain, which gave us reason and language. It gave us the "BOMB" too which might make us extinct or at the very best go back to phase one. I think E.O. Wilson said it best (anyway I think it was him) when describing the levels of the brain:

1. heartbeat
2. heartstrings
3. heartless

Anyway that is how I memorized the different functions. I memorized the planets by saying, "My very educated mother just serves us nine pickles." Get it? Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. I guess I need a new one for the new planet they discovered just beyond the Kiper belt and then there is the controversy about Pluto being a real planet. Oh well. It worked for high school. Just about the only thing that did.

2005-10-03T06:22:00.000-07:00

A single neuron may be rather dumb, but it is dumb in many subtle ways. - Francis Crick.

What impresses me about my brain is that when it couldn't become any bigger and still manage to be born of a human mother it figured out all sorts of way to keep evolving like:

1. It got really wrinkled so that it would have more surface area for the new neocortex (is the new redundant there?)
2. It figured out, and this is so cool, how to store things outside of itself. It did this with language and especially poetry and stories, art and then of course alphabetic literacy. Inventing an alphabet, a bunch of abstract squiggles to represent sound was huge. All the above things were huge on our evolutionary path. I image each new thing we learned changed our brain in significant ways adding more neurons and axons and dendrites, etc and hence more capacity for new things. Each new thing, of course, changed the existing culture tremendously. What is amazing is that the separate parts of the brain are rather dumb like Crick says, but the synergy, good grief, it is everything. We are so much greater than the sum of our parts.

2005-10-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

Art makes eccentricity safe. Diane Ackerman

When I reached puberty I started having problems with my eccrentricity. Who didn't? Actually, I am aware of lots of people who didn't. They are the ones who when asked "Did you like High SchooL?" answer yes. I am never friends with those people since the are the ones that made my life a living hell back then. The deal was then that you had to be like everyone else and I tried but somehow it really didn't come together for me. I finally ended up with the other misfits, the baddies and the art nerds. I made wild synaptic leaps between the two groups. The artists won, thank god. I shudder to think of what would have happened to me if the bads would have stolen my soul. The bads were cynical and unhappy. Actually so were the artists, but they were cynical and unhappy in a deep meaningful way that led to creating art. The bads just drank and ran around in fast cars. The bads were rich. The artists were dazzled by the mystery in life (we weren't rich) and as Cioran says in A Short History of Decay......life is tolerable only by the degree of mystification we endow it with. I think if we were to study "Art" and could begin to understand the working of the quirky artist's brain we would learn a lot about how the brain perceives how it knows. Before language it was all images. Images are us. I guess this doesn't even begin to explain why bits of sodium and potassium (gatoraid actually) can make me different and why in being different I found a home in the arts but it does open the question and adds to the things I have to think about and solve before I stop listening to the prompting of those bits of electrochemicals.

When I am talking to myself am I having a monologue or a dialogue? Are we one or are we two? or are we both one and two?
Shunryu Suzuki, says "our body and mind are both two and one". But he was talking about the Zen mind. Is that a "normal mind". Are we all Zen?

2005-09-30T06:08:00.000-07:00

Nature or shall we say evolution has played many a mean trick on us whether it was intentional (intelligent design, or in this case unintelligent design) or just random acts that seemed to work at the time but that take a long time to change. Chistos di Destino, jokes of destiny ( that was a good movie by Lena Wertmueller who was a protege of Fellini). Here are a few other bad destiny jokes that I have been thinking about.

1. We have a brain that understands perfection and can never, never even approach it.
2. We have a brain that understands immortality but can't have it either.
3. We have a brain that often mistakes lust for love. Messy bit of business there, wouldn't you say?
4. We have a brain that remembers things we want to forget and forgets things we want to remember.
5. We have a brain that thinks enough is never enough and then we have a brain that makes a rule against thinking like that.
(Thou shall not covet) It is one of the 7 deadly sins so it must be bad.

Back to Lena Wertmueller. She was quite popular in the 1970's. My favorite film of hers was "Swept Away" with Giancarlo Giannini. Just saying his name was such a pleasure, watching him was beyond pleasure (see #3 above). This was an adaption of "The Taming of the Shrew" mixed with the struggle of the working class (him). Not to mention that it was really, really romantic. They are shipped wrecked on a deserted island so naturally any class structure crumbled. This is definitely a date movie (film) but no Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks this. It has raw ribald humor mixed with biting political satire. American movies don't do this. Why? Does this lead us to #6? We are born one place but our brains think like we were born in Italy.

I realize I am blaming all of this on the brain and/or the mind. You know that massive chemistry lab you carry on your shoulders that often makes more problems than it solves. The Lab that is open 24/7 and works overtime at 3am when it releases the most thought disturbing chemicals and then is mad at you because you didn't give it enough sleep. The Garden of Eden was when we didn't have a brain except the one that makes you breath and eat and mate. Eve obviously got the human brain first because she had a brain that thought enough was never enough and life has never been the same and several millennia later I am up at 3am thinking that enough is never enough and then feeling bad about it.

2005-09-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

The name of the movie with the 3 scientist on Mont St Michele was "Mindwalk". My friend Ruth Johnson who couldn't figure out how to comment on the blog emailed me and gave me the details. It was based on "Turning Point" by Frithof Capra and was mostly just talk about quantumphysics/metaphysics except it was a little to glib. Physics has to be a little more difficult than that. It was a dialogue between a scientist, Liv Ullman a politician and a poet. Nice setting though. It was the "documentary" version of "What the Bleep......" which was an animation/dramatization/talking head flick about how to make a science movie for the new age. We should have all been given crystals when we left. Neither of these selections are on my list of favorite films but they did move me along a bit in my personal journey of why I am not a scientist but would love to be one.

Any film by Frederico Fellini is top on my list. I will never forget seeing "Juliette of the Spirits" about a middle aged woman going insane. I think. Fellini's films make you think and my mind was just beginning to know that that was a possibility and that there was something else in the world beside boys, cars, cloths. Yes, I will be the first to admit that I was really shallow during certain formative years, but I am glad I was because I learned a great deal about what is important and what isn't. Having fun is important. So is being serious. I like to do both at the same time.

2005-09-21T06:40:00.000-07:00

On the first level of Dante's Hell are all the people who risked nothing in life. I would agree with that one as people who believe in nothing don't really have a life but I had a hard time dealing with Paulo and Francesca who are the star-crossed lovers that are doomed to hell because they let passion override reason. I guess I am going to Dante's hell. Think about it though: spend eternity with people filled with passion, like Bill Clinton, and all the artists and writers I can think of or with Saint Bernard and his pantheon. I guess both would be interesting. Actually to Dante, Hell is for people without hope. Purgatory for people with hope but missed the boat on the passion/reason thing but are trying to improve by going through a private hell for a while. That might not be so bad actually. Isn't that life?

Back to movies. I remember now the movies that were so important to me.

1. Mondo Cane. I went with my sister who was in college. It was at the Valley Art so I knew it was going to be something entirely different and besides college kids went to it. It was really the first film I'd seen that dealt with the human condition. It was shocking. The title might give away the fact that things weren't as good as I had thought as it means something like world gone to the dogs. It was mind expanding. It made me think. It was a film not just a movie. I would love to see it again and see if it holds up. So often things don't. I remember seeing "Easy RIder" and thinking at the time that it was soooooo cool. I tried to watch it as an adult and it was so silly and so trite. About the same time I saw Mondo Cane I read "The Little Prince", which was one of those simple little books that had a very strong message for me about how to live a real life. I read it a lot. I understand they are making a movie out of it.

2. Last Year at Marienbad. I didn't understand this film at all but I knew that I should. It was the first "art film" I had seen that was way over my head. I didn't understand flashbacks at the time and the time sequences are really dominant in this film. I think that is what it was all about. I need to see it again. I learned I had a lot to learn and a very long journey to take if I were going to be the enlightened person that the Little Prince and Mondo Cane had convinced me I should be.

2005-09-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

To continue on books for a while.....another book that was very life altering for me was Barbara Kingsolver's "Prodigal Summer". I read it during the first summer after my husband died so I was pretty much like a sponge just soaking up anything that would allow me to feel alive again. It is not Kingsolver's best work, I like "Poisonwood Bible" better and it is a better written book but Prodigal made me start writing and writing made me start feeling and feeling made me start living again.

It is amazing to me that after experiencing chaos in our lives we can self-organize again. One thing one learns from being in chaos is that it is our friend. For example, and I digress here a bit, Hurricane Katrina was probably the result of some butterfly flapping it wings in Brazil and causing all the seemingly unrelated chaotic events that ended up being Katrina. A lot of things that didn't have anything to do with weather, per se, made Katrina happen. The healing of New Orleans will be the same, Chaos and self-organization. Chaos allow us to be reborn into a new human being or a city. I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. I am not even sure I would like the person I was ten years ago. My spiritual and physical "Katrina" reorganized me into someone I like better. Does this mean that horrid things have to happen to us before we can reach some kind of enlightenment? I hate to say it, but I think it is true. Of course there is no guarantee that the horrid thing will bring enlightenment. It could just make you bitter or hateful or a victim and/or catatonic. The question looms though, will New Orleans be better? I sure could be. Then again it could become a plastic disneyesque version of it former self.

Another book, "Into the Forest", by someone I can't remember was so impressive that I am going to go to Amazon right now and buy another copy. It was the first book I read in my book club and everyone else pretty much hated it.

2005-09-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

I think it is easier to think of books that have changed my life for some reason. Here is the start of my list. These are the fiction ones.

1. Damien by Herman Hesse
This was the first piece of literature I read without having to for a class. I hadn't been to college yet and high school for me was a totally hateful experience that I don't really want to ever think about it. The only thing I remember from high school was the first page of my French book. J'entre dans la salle de classe. Je pron my place, j'oevere mon livre, je regard la tour Effel. That's it and it's probably wrong. I "met" Hesse when I was traveling in Europe with a friend who had been to college and was by my standards of the day, very intellectual. She was my Virgil, my guide to enlightenment by choice. I was on a train in one of those old style compartments where the seats face each other. Julie is across from me. She had suggested I read Hesse. I was awestruck with the language even though it was a translation from the German, which I didn't speak then just the 4 sentences in french. I ended up reading everything Hesse wrote and pretty much continued that tradition to this day, that is, reading everything from an author until I get completely sated. Anyway, Damien is about a young man who struggles with his identity in a really big way. He is making the break with the traditional/conventional path of his parents and finding that he is quite different than they are. His world is very different from his parents and that is what struck me, how different my world was from the world my parents knew. There was then a tremendous generation gap. He discovers that even the greatest good can be used for horrid evil. It is not the typical coming of age book like so many others we were required to read either by professors or peers. As is so often true, I can't remember all of why it moved me but I do know that somehow it rearranged the chemicals in my brain and changed me forever. I was not the same at all when I was done. I was well on my own path to myself.

More on the generation gap. At that time, in the 60's the old world collided with the new. It was the dawning of the age of Aquarius, if you will. As hokey as that is it is the social metaphor of the times. My parents were raised by Victorians. I did not live in a Victorian world by any means. I am going to think about why things changed then so much in the world
and, why for people like me, it was such a struggle to become myself and move away from that past. We can discuss it later. Somehow that past failed us. I think Hesse thought the same thing. He made me do this.

2005-09-17T17:01:00.000-07:00

Are all movies Films? I went to see the "Constant Gardener" last night and when I left the theater I said, "That is the best Film I have seen in a long, long time. Needless to say I didn't say that when I left the theater after seeing "Bewitched". It wasn't even a good movie. So what is the difference? First off Films are good and they are a delight to watch on so many levels. For example, "Constant Gardener" was was a geo/political polemic. It was also a discourse on ethics and morality not to mention an exploration of courage and of how far one can go for what one believes in. It was a love story, tender and touching and surprise, surprise not illicit or pornographic. It was filled with contrasts. The music was awesome and was used effectively to delineate the different cultures in the film. Color was used in a similar way. Flashbacks artfully gave us the history we needed and not at all confusing. There was with a mixture of intimate handheld camera work and wide expansive shots of landscapes. I could watch this film a hundred times and want to see it again. And more importantly I could learn something from it every time. The narrative was compelling but it was the form of the art that took my breath away. That is a film. A movie is something you rent when you are board and want to be entertained. I don't think you can go away from a movie and be changed on some elemental level, you can't help but be when you see a film you love.

5 favorite films (not in a linear order of best to worst)

1. Constant Gardener
2. Dr. Strangelove
3. Them ( I include this as it was a film that affected my life from childhood on. It is probably a movie, but what did I know)
(It is the one about the ants that mutate because of atomic testing an important issue to me as a kid who lived in the
middle of no where and down wind from Nevada). Ultimately we all live down wind, don't we?
4.
5.
I have to think about the rest. Help me out here.

2005-09-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

I figured it out. It doesn't matter if art is analytical or expressionistic. It can be all of the above or non of the above but what it always is is sensual. Think about it. Seeing, smelling, touching, tasting, hearing. It isn't about being beautiful or shocking it is about being aware of being.

2005-09-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

Nothing that is vast enters into the life of mortals without a curse. Sophocles

Some artists are totally analytical, Sol Lewitt comes to mind. I don't see any emotion or intuition there. It is almost pure geometry, very rational (what ever that means). It would be impossible for me to do art like his. I divide the world of artist into at least 2 categories. Analytical and expressionistic, linear and nonlinear, rational and irrational. Notice how mostly we define the opposite with a form of the original word. Is the original word the one that is" not" the other one or is it the one that is i.e. is the word irrational the concept and we subtract the ir to get the opposite. It is like man and woman. Which is it?. Getting back to the 2 types of artists, naturally it is a matter of degree and the amount of linear/non linear influence an artist has at any given time is mutable. I am perfectly balanced as an artist. The rich irony here is that I am not balanced in my non art life and that somehow allows me to be balanced in my art life. Or as Jakob Böhem so elegantly said, "Now mark what I say. The Right Eye looketh forward in thee into Eternity. The Left Eye looketh backward into Time. If thou now sufferest thyself to be always looking into Nature, and the Things of Time, it will be impossible for thee ever to arrive at the Unity which thou wishest for". Works for me.

I like what anonymous 1 said about dreams yesterday. Dreams work. I have been trying to design a new painting that I want to call, "Bi Polar" in celebration of that most noble affliction and I meditated on it before sleeping and sometime during the nightI was "told" how to paint it. It was like a lightening flash of insight.

2005-09-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

"April is the cruelest month". T.S. Elliot

September, by far is the cruelest month for me. On the 9th five years ago my husband died in my arms after suffering all the horrors of chemotherapy. Now, of course we have the aftermath of Katrina and the memorials for Sept 11. It is all one big bad memory. I saw a documentary last night on 9/11. Seeing those pictures again brought back so much. The feelings of helplessness and defeat. I remember the sorrow that accompanied the knowledge that the life we had know so far was somehow over and things would never be the same.

Once about 8 months after my husband died I was hiking in Tortilla Canyon with friends. We weren't on a trail, just moving as a group through the canyon. I felt at the time like we were a prehistoric troupe of early wild humans. It was a pleasing sensation of something very ancient. Like this is the way it is supposed to be somehow. We came to a little piece of paper lying on the ground. A couple of the others stepped over it. I picked it up and on it was written, in this scrawling, psycho-like handwriting, "Nothing's the same any more". Like I needed a reminder. Interesting though. I think I did need a reminder. I needed to acknowledge the change and move back into the world of the living. When someone you love dies you die with them and then you wake up and you find out that they left you a passport into a new life. It is almost as if though them you can now live again. What a gift.

2005-09-11T06:19:00.000-07:00

" There is no science without fancy and no art without facts", Vladimir Nabokov

Someone said in class the other day that art was emotional and science was rational. Clearly, that is way to simplistic. Nothing is just about one thing. There is no way my art, or anyone else's I know, is only emotional. I don't even know what that word means. All I know is that it is most commonly used in a pejorative sense, as in "you are being emotional", as if that were some crime against humanity. What I deal with as an artist are facts and ideas diverted through a temperament, mine (Emile Zola's said that first). It is a translation, as it were, of a pre-verbal stage. It is about things that don't have a language yet either in my head or in the head of society as a whole. Paintings are like dreams, are dreams emotional? I dreamed last night I sat next to VP Cheney at a cocktail party in Jackson Hole and had a rational conversation with him about playing a game called Doom. I was quite calm in my dream and not at all emotional. So where do we put these "things" that are not rational per se, nor are they emotional? We need a word for the wordless. That is why we have dreams and art and we should just live with it and quit trying to pigeonhole it into something that it is not or something that limits it. Trying to define the totally abstract is a bad idea. It is like trying to define "God". Once you define it, it can no longer be God. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle works here too. That is why I like the theoretical physicists the best as they have a view of the world similar to mine. Ideas like Aristotle's "Everything either is or is not", just doesn't work for me. I also have problem with Descartes" Cognito ergo sum. To me it should be" I am, therefore I think".

2005-09-08T06:14:00.000-07:00

Really the best news that has come out of this entire Katrina thing is that Bosnia Hertzagovinia is sending us $6000,00 (yes, that is correct, 3 zeros). It is the moral equivalent of The United Arab Emerits send us $100 million and some free oil. Maybe even more impressive actually when you consider what a mess the entire area was and still is. Why do I keep thinking that the current administration will somehow take all these gestures of solidarity and generosity and make everyone hate us even more. Who will be blamed for this disaster? Who can we invade now to get even? If Cuba, who wanted to send Drs., by the way, hadn't been located where it is the hurricane would not have hit our coast and destroyed our levies. It is there fault and we need to get even. Here is what I think: When people offer gifts one must accept them with all graciousness one can muster. It makes people feel good to do good thing. Apparently there are ship loads of supplies just waiting for the okay of our state department. Apparently, you have to be approved before you can give to us.

One of saddest things for me are all the people who have had to leave there pets behind. People who don't have pets would never understand the bond that is formed and the sense of responsibility one feels for what one has tamed. It is its own world. I wouldn't go without my dog if I had one. When I was a kid I ran away with my dog rather than loose him, which I had to do anyway because I was a kid. Let's face it the entire thing is sad and a black eye for certain people who are supposed to be our leaders. When they fail the most helpless they fail us all.

2005-09-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

I have been working all day. Apparently I am supposed to take today off because it is labor day. It should be non-labor day if they don't want me to work. I was talking to my friend Rosemary on the phone while I was painting and said," Well, I have to get back to work" and she said, "You're working? It's a holiday"! What am suppose to do? Sit around and watch TV?. Labor day is a fake holiday to me. I don't even know what it stands for so it essentially means nothing to me. Thanksgiving and Christmas are ok, at least there we are celebrating something and having a feast. Actually when you get down to it I'm not much for any holiday. I used to like Halloween, but it has been ruined by people putting razor blades in the candy. My theory is this: 10% of the population at any time is psychotic so you are bound to get a few razor blades in life. I told this to my drawing class and someone actually raised his hand and said. "I am it. I am the crazy one". It was so nice of him to do that. It made it easier for all of us. It is comforting knowing who the really crazy one is so it doesn't have to be me.

I like to work on my paintings. One reason I like it is that it gives me an excuse never to clean my house. The idea is if I work all the time, then I can be excused from housework which I loath. People are so understanding. Since I turned my entire house into my studio I can have stuff everywhere, except in the kitchen which I try to keep tidy. And well the bathroom too.

2005-09-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

I just got back for seeing "March of the Penguins". Why do I go to these animal films. They always break my heart. What brave sacrifices they made without question. Somewhere along the line of our rush to be evolved we started questioning everything. We challenge everything too, at least that is what we are taught to do. I can't imagine anyone I know living under those conditions just to bring in a new generation. No domestic abuse there. No running home to mother. No whining. We could all learn a lesson here. Skepticism is important, don't get me wrong, but when it comes to nurturing the next generation I think we should try and keep our mouths shut for a while.

2005-09-03T15:55:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you how disappointed I am in Plato. Here I thought he was this great philosopher but in his Republic where he explores the idea of the ideal, utopian society, he totally puts down artists. Pretty much according to him, artists mainly poets, as he calls them, shouldn't be allowed in a civil and just society because they pollute the minds of the citizens. If you have them at all, they should be heavily censored and allowed to create only things that ennoble the gods and man. For example, fear of death is a bad thing so it is a taboo subject as is tragedy and or comedy. Boy, I bet the Athenian play-writes really liked him. Artists must never entertain anyone, just bore them to death. No fear there. It's a good thing no one ever really took him seriously because just about everything we know about ancient Greek culture is through the arts. Imagine, all we would have left is Plato and a totally wrong view of what they were like. He even thought Homer's Iliad should be censored because, (1) He made Zeus look petty and belligerent(which he was) and (2) He made the hero Achilles look non- heroic and whinny. Gods and heros must always look good because whatever you read you will become. I think he gives artists way too much credit.

Another thing that bugs me is that he thought that artists spoke the lowest level of the language. Excuse me! Artists speak the highest form of the language. Good grief. Imagine being married to this guy. Okay, one good thing he did was say that women should be educated the same as men. In that system of no beautiful or inspiring things to read or see, who would would care if they got educated. Ignorance is bliss, in this case anyway. How ironic, we finally find a guy who wants to give us equal rights and this is what we get.

2005-09-02T06:25:00.000-07:00

I really didn't mean to insult my sister. She is really, really smart. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. The thing I naturally do in life is try to find connections. Art, science and religion all come out of the human mind and experience but it is more than that, isn't it? They reflect our hightest asperations. They don't always achieve that status but seek to. Do all cultures have all three? I don't know. I am pretty sure they all have art and they all have religion. Religion and Art were the early science, but naturally there weren't "Science" as in using the scientific method, etc. But they did have systematic ways of trying to observe and explain things. Science evolved it didn't just happen one day. At one point Alchemy was what science was (wasn't). We learned from its failures. We all moved on.

2005-09-01T20:11:00.000-07:00

2005-09-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

I think Art, Science and Religion all come from the same source so they are all related. Almost nobody else agrees with me. I actually had a friend lecture me for 10 minutes about how ridiculous I was for even thinking that. Obviously, they use different methods. Duh! I know that but the search is for the same thing. "WHY", HOW, and "WHAT FOR". Don't we all want some sort of answer to those questions? Why else would we invent art, science and religion, not to mention politics. Scientist are often the most ardent in their denial of any relationship what so ever. And of course, I understand why what with the Bible Literalist wanting to include the Creation stories in science class. What are they thinking? There is science and their is faith. There is fact (science) and truth (art and religion). They use completely different languages to communicate. Logos for facts and mythos for art, etc. One explains the world the other embellishes it. Personally, I wouldn't want a world without both. They are equally valid and necessary although more often than not both sides diminish the other.
All I know is that I want answers and I search a lot of places for them. If you don't care about the essential QUESTIONS (root word QUEST!) then you live a truly unexamined life and I would love to hear from you because I have no idea what that would be like.

Something else I learned today is that the only truly monogamous creature on earth that we know of is a a tape worm that lives in the intestines of fish. It is possibly monogamous only because it is physically connected like a conjoined twin. I guess that would work. Not in humans though. We would figure out a way to get around that little problem, i am sure.

2005-08-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

It is interesting that I got the most responses on my Blog when I talked about Jessie, the wounded soul German Shepherd. Clearly, there are other animal lovers out there. Mostly, I love wild animals but since I can't pet them and love them the way I can a cat or dog I settle (bad word) for domesticated pets. I had a pet wolf once, Virginia Woof was here name. Loved her as she was so special and amazing. She lived 16 years and died just a few months before my husband died. That was the worst year of my life. My two special friends who I wandered around the desert with gone in the blink of an eye. How do I show my love for wild animals, you ask. It is not easy. I volunteer with Liberty Wildlife and get calls to go rescue wounded raptors and pick them up (another story entirely) and take them to the hospital. I also co- founded a land trust who's sole purpose is to preserve land so animals can have a place to live and do what animals do. I never feed wild animals. I basically leave them alone so they can do their job. We all have jobs here and one of mine is to take care of creatures (I would include wild plants too here) who can't talk. Someone has to represent them in the legislature, in congress, etc. Look what we did to the passenger pidgin, the do do and the buffalo. If I had been alive then, maybe we would have a few of those left. I know, we have buffalo but nothing like before. What a travesty that was. One of the less nobel parts of our history.

2005-08-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

I have been taking care of Jessie, the special needs German Shepherd for the last couple of days so I haven't had time to think much less write in my blog. Jessie was part of a drug raid. She was found tied up in the back yard was taken to the pound and was rescued by a group of people who love shepherds and then found her way to my friends. Dawn and Sylvia take care of my cat Ishkabibble when I go away so I take care of Jessie. Ishkabibble and Jessie are great friends as Ish was abandoned too and finds a another wounded heart in Jessie. Jessie wants to love and be loved but doesn't quite know how. She tries to cuddle and sit on my lap. She follows me around like a lost soul. I hate to think what her life was like before in the meth lab but it is amazing the spirit that survives in her. She is a joy. I only get animals that have been left behind and no one wants. I can't imagine owning an animal I had to pay for there are so many that no one wants. We are responsible forever for the things that we tame. Remember that from "The Little Prince". If you haven't read that book please do. I loved it as a teenager. It was a children's book but more than that. It has lessons for us all. Tomorrow, more on art, science and religion and maybe we can add some neuroscience in there too.

2005-08-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking a lot about Greek Tragedies. I love them as they are so real and unreal, so historical and mythical at the same time. A perfect combination for a wandering mind. Anyway, Agamemnon (sic)( I am glad I don't have to know how to spell these names) led the Greek troops against the Trojans in that war. When he came home, his wife, Clytemestra and her lover killed him. It was then left for Orestes, the son to avenge his father's death. That was an absolute moral responsibility. Not to do so would have been unthinkable. It was also an absolute moral law never, under any circumstances to kill ones mother. What is Orestes to do? He must obey the ancient laws of retribution and also the law of mother protection. Well, he kills his mother as that I guess seemed the less of two evils. Imagine making a choice like that. This was one dysfunctional family. Theoretically, I suppose, Orestes murder of his mother should be avenged by someone, ad infinitum. Where does it end? As a flash back the reason Clytemestra killed Agamemnon, aside from the new lover, was because he killed their daughter in order to assure fair winds to Troy. It was his moral responsibility to lead those troops to battle, blah, blah. The ancient laws were difficult to live with. The good thing about this whole mess is that Athena intervenes on behalf of Orestes and instead of allow retribution to continue unabated forever she set up a court with a a jury of Orestes' peers. This is about the birth of civil law replacing the ancient one that may have worked for a while but as you can see could become very, very cumbersome. I like the idea of moral obligation and responsibility. I think we have lost too much of that. We depend on the law to such a degree that we abdicate our duty of others. I think too that I can understand a little better the motivation of the muslim fundamentalist that hate us. It is the ancient law that they obey. I don't know exactly what we did or when, maybe it was the crusades, or later colonizations that they are mad about but it seems to me that continuing the idea of retribution, eye for an eye, may not be the most intelligent way to handle it all. We just create another reason to hate us. Another reason for retribution. Tomorrow I want to think about immortality and the warrior. This may relate to the suicide bombers.

2005-08-25T05:37:00.000-07:00

What I think is really interesting is that when Einstein was working out his Theory of Relativity artists like Picasso were doing cubist paintings which to me seem to represent visually what Einstein was saying. Picasso was giving us a relativistic view of things. I don't particularly like his painting as a visual expression but love them as a metaphor for the times. Think about it. The world seemed to be changing on all levels not just art and physics. Social institution were breaking down too. It seems it was a time of great metaphysical changes in the human psyche (a greek word for soul, by the way). Social relativism began seeping into our social structure. Moral systems that we thought were inviolate began to crumble. We began to question the existence of the God of our youth. As a society we began leaving pre critical naiveté behind. The consequences have been profound. The question is, "Who started it all?" Picasso? Einstein? Us? Fate? W.B. Yeats wrote, "The Second Coming" about that time too. In it he describes a world that is coming apart, where "the best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity". Sound sort of familiar, doesn't it?

2005-08-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

Albert Einstein said that the most important question you have to ask yourself is if you live in a friendly universe or a hostile universe. Which one do you live in? I live in a friendly universe. One filled with wild possibilities and lots of wonderful ironies and jokes, lots and lots of jokes. We can also look at ourselves are being made of stardust or thermo nuclear waste as they are basically the same thing. I like the former stardust one better, but must admit that the thermo nuclear waste one has a lot of merit. The world is divided between the nucular waste people and the star dust people.

2005-08-23T06:11:00.000-07:00

To continue with my diatribe on the science/religion conundrum that I started yesterday (see blow entry) I need to say that I think the most profound theology is being done in the physics departments. It is there that the mystery is disclosed and then deepened. Scientists at this point do not have the hubris to name the ultimate creator. By doing so, of course, we limit it to some transcendental yenta involved in everyones business. That puts the infinite on the same level as Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. Well, not really the Bunny but definitely Santa who is defined in popular culture to children as an immortal transcendental being who" knows when you have been good or bad", etc. Ah for the days of pre-critical naïveté when we could believe all that stuff without question. I suppose that is what the story of Adam and Eve is really about. The time before doubt and skepticism. Before we had to create science and religion when we had everything and nothing. The question is is how many of us would want to go back to that in our adult form? Personally, I need the snake. What about you? Snake or no snake? I guess we have to define the snake. In my mind the snake in Genesis is not the incarnation of evil but the path to knowledge and by extension to humanity. When we became human our relationship with the infinite changed. Change the way you look at something and the thing changes. The infinite evolves with us. As we know more we know less.

2005-08-22T05:48:00.000-07:00

As an artist I spend way too much time in my head but that enables me to come to some interesting conclusions about "What it is all about". I have been listening to the "Joys of Science" an extended science lesson I wish I had gotten when I was in 6th grade instead of the great experiment of hooking the lightbulb to the battery. That was the lesson in electromagnitism which I understand now to be the most awesome force there is. I degress. I am also doing a course on the Tao and am trying to bring these two things together in my mind. The two concepts, let's call them science and religion, are NOT mutually exclusive, they are the same search. Science deepens the mystery and I suppose that is why some religious types don't like it much since they have it figured out. I like what Max Planck, the father of quantum physics said when he got the Nobel Prize. "There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and hold the most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix all all matter." That is it. And the really cool thing is, is if you look at this matter vibrating you change it. Change the way you look at things and you change things. It fits, doesn't it. More later. To work

2005-08-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

A phantom poster here with permission to access and post!
Anne, or is it I, spent the day yesterday helping my niece, or is it me, unpack things at her, or it is my, new house.
I, or is it she, really enjoyed the swim in the salt water pool.

I, or is it My niece, was really grateful for the help!
(Thanks Auntie A!!! Love, Niece B)

2005-08-03T14:28:00.000-07:00