Laurel Massé

Gabby's gold

Gabby Douglas just added to Olympics - and American - history. At sixteen years of age, competing in the Olympic Games for the first time, she has won two gold medals in women's gymnastics, one as a member of the American team in the team championship event, and one for individual all-round best. She is the first African-American gymnast to win the individual gold.

When interviewed by the news media, she said this about her win:

“You just have to not be afraid and go out there and just dominate,” Douglas said afterward, a stuffed Olympic mascot under one arm, a bouquet of flowers in one hand and an Olympic gold medal around her neck. “You have to go out there and be a beast. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to be on the top." (as reported in The Washington Post)

The article was posted online, and there were many comments. As usual, some were thoughtful, some were hateful, some congratulatory. Many were political. This one, though, caught my attention:

"The press really ought to avoid quoting athletes when their comments are dumb. 'You just have to not be afraid and go out there and just dominate.' Really, is that all it takes? Who expects wisdom from a short young naive gymnast with no life experience outside of training and competition. The girl's a great gymnast, but she's not a top notch thinker, and really she's not an inspiration to anyone."  

Really? She inspires me. Not just because she defies gravity - for her, gravity seems to be more of a suggestion than the law - but because, at sixteen, she already knows something it took me years to finally master. She is not afraid to excel. She does not seem to fret about the consequences of being great. WIth that foundation, she will probably never worry, while receiving a standing ovation, about how she will have to pay for having been singled out for extra attention and praise. I do not envy the excellence of others. I celebrate it. I wish I had not learned (and had to unlearn) to be afraid of my own.

So congratulations, Gabby. May you savor your every triumph. And may there be many more of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's no place like home

Almost everything I own is now stacked in a storage unit in Dutchess County, NY, safely tucked behind a door like these. Mrs. Peel (my feline companion in all adventures) is with me with her necessaries, and I have a few things for the summer, clothes and music and such, as I planned. I also have a lone vacuum cleaner attachment, and a few other things I did not plan on keeping with me all summer, while somewhere in the unit is the tin of Yorkshire Gold loose tea that I wanted, nay, needed! to have with me. Clearly, there was some last-minute frenzied flinging from my hand into any open bin. But, as I am not settling into my own place till September, I will have forgotten all about that tea by the time I see it again. It will then be like unto a gift from the gods.

Even more like such a gift is the help given me by magnificent friends and family who hauled boxes, levitated a piano, and fit everything securely, first into the U-Haul truck, and then into the storage space. Nevertheless, the move was exhausting. Several days passed before I was able to walk upright and speak in complete sentences, although I was inspired to squeak a surprised "eek!" on the first night away from the city. That same inspiration brought Mrs. P-Stands-for-Predator snaking, bloody-minded, out from under the bed. The thing got away, for which we are truly grateful (well, maybe not Mrs. Peel), and sleep since then has been deep and dreamy. I'm feeling better now. We're both exploring the territory. She has a new cat toy, and I've got the Grail: a library card in a new town.

Honey, we're home.

SInging as we go

 

Moving Day today, blessed by the help of good friends, seen and unseen. Your prayers for successful loading, driving, and unloading, with merriment throughout, will be greatly appreciated.

My knapsack on my back

 

 

By sundown this evening, I will have finished packing (as you can see above, some things pack themselves). The U-Haul truck is reserved for Wednesday, and if all goes well, Mrs. Peel and I should be elsewhere and ready to relax by teatime. I have moved a lot of times, packing, unpacking. The first task is collecting boxes. The last time I moved, I got rid of the used ones, because I wouldn't need them again. How endearingly optimistic! Then, all I have to do is fill them, number each box, and keep a list of what is in it. I was well into the high double digits a few days ago when I dissolved in tears over how much stuff was left to pack. Not, mind you, because I was tired of packing, but because I am not exactly travelin' light. 

Shortly after I came back to the city in 2006, a friend asked me for moving tips. I had one: get rid of stuff. I told her that my only regret was that I had brought so much with me that I could have sold or given away before the move. And yet, I do not take my own advice.

Not that I never cull my possessions. I do, often. Something shifts in my mind, and I can sort and discard quickly and efficiently. But if that mental shift doesn't happen, every decision takes a long time. Of course, sometimes I wish later that I had kept something, usually a book. It has been shocking to learn that there are books I used to own that even the much-vaunted New York Public Library apparently doesn't.

When Hurricane Irene was spiralling toward New York City, threatening (according to local media) to roar over the boroughs and destroy us, New Yorkers were encouraged to gather their most important items into "go bags", so as to be ready to evacuate if necessary. I came up with three bags full, to be used depending on whether I was on foot, on public transportation, or in my car.

1. Walking list: Mrs. Peel (cat) in her carrier.

2. Public transportation list: Cat in carrier hanging from one shoulder. Bible, Riverside Shakespeare, current journal in a bag on the other. My little-girl charm bracelet on wrist.

3. Beat-up Toyota list: All of the preceding, plus all my diaries and dream journals, and Greenie, the rescued corn plant.

I actually live on a big hill, so I did not need that bag, but the thought process was interesting. What mattered to me? Mrs. Peel, plus stories. Nothing else.

Even though there has been no yard sale, and I only have time to pack and move, and must sort things out later, it's still basically Mrs. Peel, plus stories. The stories of all my books and bookshelves. The lineage of my piano. The mystery of the painting that has been hanging above it. My wicker chair has a great little tale to tell. Greenie has a ballad. Everything speaks. Once I have settled into a new place this fall, I will be glad to have these familiar things around me in a new setting. As a priest I knew used to say, "Period. Paragraph. Turn the page."

New chapter.

 

 

 

I love the book of you, the lure of you...

Recently I noticed that the blogs I read most faithfully are the work of writers. Book writers, I mean, not (for the most part) Facebook posters. I don't know how I initially found some of these blogs. I'll start chatting with Mr. Google about something I want to know, and end up learning something utterly else. Perhaps I have been picking up some feline traits from Mrs. Peel. No sooner have I spotted and pounced on a falling leaf, than, hey! there's another one, further away. Pounce! But wait! Something's rustling over there! Pounce!

I'm like that in the library, too. Yes, yes, of course I go in with something specific in mind, some single book. But when I emerge an hour or two later, dazed and blinky-eyed, my arms are full of books, most of which are not at all related to the one I came in to capture. You know. The one I have forgotten about.

When I come back to the apartment, I greet Mrs. Peel, put on the kettle, and start to look at my literary plunder, hoping, hoping. If I am lucky, if I have chosen well, one of the books will be as good a portal as the book in this video. and that will be very, very good indeed.

Because this is what a real book can do.

 

 

(For those whose French is rusty, the subtitles say more or less this:

At the beginning:

Adult: So kids, again with that book?

Child, reading book: You who read these lines will discover the mystery of Georgian legends...

At the end:

Adult: Let's go, kids. Finish playing with the book. Time to eat).

La lune

The moon was full a few days ago, and I caught glimpses between buildings as it rose in the sky. It was beautiful, and my heart sang a little song.

But once upon a time, I lived where a winter night's full moon looks like this...

Moonlight in the Adirondacks, by Rockwell Kent

... and shines so loudly that you can hear the light whispering to the snow, and the moon singing her own song.

It is a hard place to live, especially in winter, but you can see why one would try.

Deep listening

I don’t have internet in my apartment at the moment. Nor do I have any magazine-in-the-mailbox subscriptions.  These two conditions are related, and there are a couple of reasons for them. The first, the “presenting complaint”, in med-speak, is the expense. When I first came back to NY and arranged for Verizon to be my provider, the lovely introductory rate was $17.99 each month. Sign me up!  When that rate expired, the new rate was $10 more per month, and now it's $44.99 per month before taxes. Just for internet.

Magazines are the same. A sweet bargain for the first year or two, to catch you, and then a much higher rate when your subscription renews automatically, as a “convenience” to you. More important, magazines, even the best ones, are either repetitive (sorry, Oprah), or relentless (New Yorker, I’m talking to you).  Or both. Who has the time to read them all? And who, in this apartment, has the time to read them all when there is a cat to admire, Shakespeare on the shelf, music in my head, and friends to talk to? Real life, compassionate, aware, loving, curious friends?

Which brings me to another concern: The Vortex. Our minds are wired to look  at the newest information. This can keep us both alive - Look out! There’s a snake! Move fast! A tree is falling! - and breeding - wow! now THERE”S a man!. This also makes us the perfect targets for Facebook and Twitter addiction, because the feeds keep updating. I find I am reading about someone I barely know doing something I don’t care about (so glad you’re having coffee for your hangover, my fb friend). It’s the latest, so it’s the loudest. Though it is easy to decide to stay away, actually doing that requires overriding millions of years of evolutionary development. But just as I am trying to do that, here comes another update, and it sucks me back in, on the off-chance that I need to know this new bit of information.

The Vortex substitutes the watching of life for living of life. It affected me years ago, through television, and so I got rid of my TV. Since then I have been encouraged (often!) to re-engage the box, and I haven’t yet done so. Perhaps when a cable company allows me to choose and pay for only the stations I want (I want my BBC, period). The result of this mode of living is that I am an alien. Those who watch a lot of telly probably don’t realize that they talk more about that than about anything else. They talk more about the characters on shows than about the people they actually know. I notice it because, when I have to ask who they are talking about, they are astounded by my ignorance.

But I watched a lot of TV in my past. Many friends have been made to endure my recall of theme songs and  jingles from the 60s. In 1978, when I had the car accident that forced me out of the music business for a couple of years, I had extremely good medical care from Dr. Alvin Mulne, and all the superb staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, CA. I also had Jamie Sommers, The Bionic Woman, on daily reruns, and that show played an important part in my healing, too. I had been surprised to find that, thanks to bad management, I was rather spectacularly underinsured, and the daily “meditation” and visualization of her speed and strength and acute hearing was almost the only post-op therapy I had. We really do have the technnology, built-in, in mind and spirit.

Today I am living in a cable-free, magazine-free, internet-free apartment. Some of this may may well change. It's inconvenient. To publish this post, I have to walk down the hill to the library with my laptop on my back, and then walk back up. It's raining. But once I am home again, the mental silence - because I can't check Facebook - is deep and fruitful. The payoff's been really big. Clearer ideas. Sharper awareness when I am out, quieter thoughts when I stay in. Intuition's more insistent. Prolific dreaming. Prayer. I feel more present to Presence.

So far, so good.

 

Dreaming wings

This photograph - which is not a fake - is extraordinary in many ways, not the least of which is that is has countless layers of symbolism and story and the truth of dreams. Every time I look at it, I see more.

 

Tell me.  What do you see?

Wonder Sunday, courtesy of Science Friday

As Madeleine L'Engle once pointed out, there is a big difference between visible/invisible and seen/unseen. I believe that's why we don't see the kingdom of heaven though it is among us, and why Mrs. Peel is tippy-toe puffy-tail bouncing sideways across the room like a Halloween cat right now toward something I wouldn't know is there.

"We're behind the eight-ball,” says marine biologist Roger Hanlon, “if we think the world looks like how we see it. There's much more information there, and other animals see it very differently."

Here's why he said that:

Thank you, ScienceFriday.

Here endeth the lesson.

Or does it?