Good Fences

What do we owe our neighbors - those with whom we share fences? What is the right mix of individuality and conformity? Is there even such a thing?
In my backyard there are 'weeds'. The 'weeds' are there because I love them. I have selected some of these plants, allowing them to group themselves in the landscape as cultivars. This act makes them 'not weeds', since a weed is a plant growing where it is not wanted. One such plant is the morning glory or moon flower. It bears a carpet of delicate pink trumpet flowers that for me is a source of pure joy. But it climbs. My neighbor on the left and I share a chain link fence on which these vines take support. But in this instance, this fence is not able to be shared - it either needs to be mine or hers. She wants a pristine clean fence with nothing growing on it -- and I would like the vines to take support and bloom there. I have made some provisions for the vine within my yard - with grids and shepherd's hooks, but ultimately these are limiting. The plant coils on itself and fails to travel the required distance in order to produce flowers. Vines must produce a certain number of nodes to stimulate budding - that's just how it is. Yesterday I went to clean up the tomato patch and noticed that the flowering vines I was training onto my birdhouse pole - my birdhouse pole in my yard - were dead. She must have tried to clean the fence and in the process, snipped the stems supporting the shoots that were winding their way up to the birdhouse. I felt the tears well up, then the anger - and then set about clearing off all the wilted shoots. By their appearance, they had been snipped less than a hour before because they were flaccid, but not yet shriveled. I finished the job, cutting down all the remaining vines and the Fence is now clean. I have been trying to transplant the vine to another area of the yard - and in a few weeks will see how successful I have been.


My neighbor on the right - the vegetable gardener, is afraid of weeds since they might harbor snakes. She is also afraid of big trees that might fall on her house and she is deathly afraid of thunder and lightening which I also love, and thankfully have no control over.
To pacify her - three large pines have been cut down in the area bordering her house and mine, and from time to time she wags her finger at the plants I am cultivating on my side of the chain link fence - talking about snakes. I have never seen a snake in my yard ever. I don't think earthworms qualify.

I am thankful for my back fence neighbor who shares my sensibility - gifting me with an unruly tangle of honeysuckle, clematis and rose vines which tumble over my fence and into my life. My vine-phobic neighbors look very sternly on that fence, but can do nothing about it.

I know that my anger and sadness over the morning glory vines have less to do with the vine and more to do with my own sense of being limited and confined in order to placate and soothe a variety of concerns in my life - some of them originating even in myself, and I am awakened to the outrage and despair of certain segments of the population whose self expression either offends or scares other people. I am still trying to figure out how far I should extend myself be neighborly, or more correctly, how much I should contain myself. What I know for sure is that my spirit soars in a thunderstorm - where not even the idea of fences makes sense.

Walking

The other morning I woke up at 5.12 am and needed to move. I brushed my teeth, smoothed my hair, put on my running shoes and left the house with just my phone clipped into my waistband. I also took a bottle of water, and ditched it behind a tree on my route for the return trip. I had been walking sporadically since I made a 4 mile Central Park walk on New Years Eve of  2010. I walked 3 miles for Earth Day. I walked to and from my work appointments near the West Side Highway (15 minutes briskly each way) several times a week instead of taking the bus or cab.

A few months ago, I began having frequent arrhythmia. I've had this all my life - an occasional extra thump, or sometimes a missing beat. At these times I would startle - my body suspended in limbo for a fraction of a second, waiting for my heart to decide. This would happen once in a blue moon, once every few months. Suddenly, early this year the episodes became more frequent and more exaggerated. I was having it every day for hours at a stretch. I never felt ill, just a very unsettled 'w-t-f?' kind of feeling, but slowly I began to lose confidence in my body, and stopped exercising.

I went to my GP, who is also a cardiologist, and had the whole range of tests done, including a 24 hour Holter Monitor. Yes, my ticker was tocking occasionally, but there was nothing serious going on - would I like some beta blockers to even out the rhythm? She asked this question with a half-smile on her face because she knows I hate to take medication.

Several years ago she prescribed Mobic for my extremely painful knees. I filled the prescription, but I never took a single pill. And thank God, because Mobic turned out to be not only a pain killer, but a killer in general.
She prescribed Nexium 8 years ago for my stomach. I took it for 2 weeks, dropped it and took up yoga instead.
Then came Tapizole for my thyroid which went out of whack after a severe bout of flu. That time I didn't mess around. I took the 10 mg for a solid month. Felt good. Broke my pills in half and took 5 mg for the next month. On my follow up visit, she said "You're doing great, let's reduce you to 5 mg" I said "Sure thing Doc", and promptly reduced myself to 2.5 mg. I was officially off Tapizole by the next month after a another round of tests came back normal.

So, my answer to the beta blocker question was ''No, thank you." As long as my condition wasn't serious, which she assured me it wasn't, I could deal with this.
On my first walk to the West Side, my heart was skipping and jumping but I kept going, tired of kid-gloving it. I figured it would see me through, or I'd drop like a rock and someone would scoop me off the pavement. The next walk was better and the next, even better. By this time I had stopped consuming caffeine and all stimulants, including my beloved Coca Cola. In my flirtations with Coke since that time, I learned that it takes one to two days for my body to properly flush itself of that one dose of caffeine.

On the morning in question, I went for an hour long speed walk along the green that leads to City Island - my heart, hiccup free. After I retrieved my bottle of water which I'd stashed behind the tree, I did some standing stretches, spending some time with my head hanging down between my legs - arms dangling. The world was upside down, the trees were growing from the sky and there was a brightening pale blue abyss below me. I was caught by surprise, by the disorienting beauty of it. And I was suddenly struck by how unequivocally the Earth supports us -  our joys, fears, and even our foolishness. I broke into a smile, then an all-out giggle right there hanging upside down. In fact, I didn't want to 'right' myself for a good little while.

Photo credit: poszu.com

Perishable News

As write this, May 21st, 2011 is in it's final hour, and aside from an Icelandic volcano acting up, it seems that the earth and its inhabitants have been spared Judgement Day 2011. The billboard in this picture was posted on tenth avenue and 37th street (thereabouts) in New York City. I discovered it on a walk to that neighborhood last week, however I had been hearing about the impending end of days for about 2 years now. My mother listens to that station (94.7), to a very level-sounding radio evangelist by the name of Harold Camping. Mr.Camping is known for his doomsday predictions - his most recent (and obviously failed) forecast was for an earth-ending cataclysm in 1994.

My mother had not placed much stock in this latest prediction, continuing to listen to the radio station mostly for the traditional hymns and bible readings. But lots of people did. I understand that the above billboard was paid for by a man who liquidated his life savings to warn people about the coming rapture. He was interviewed in Times Square tonight where he kept glancing at his watch saying he didn't understand why nothing happened. Although we are all responsible for our decisions, a surprising number of people are are easily led. Mr.Camping's prediction was couched  in such uncompromising language that he attracted a certain type of zealous believer while at the same time repelling more moderate people. If he'd said this event was 'likely' rather than 'certain', I have a feeling that he might have influenced many more people.

This event resonated with me because I am in the process of examining many of my own beliefs, and identifying the influences on my way of thinking - in short, I am trying to drill down to 'me'. In this quest, it is helpful to remember that belief and truth are not the same thing. There is also a need to tease apart belief and opinion. You could say that we present our opinions to the world, but guard our beliefs even from ourselves. I am learning that I don't truly believe some of the things that I profess (all people are basically good), and that I deeply believe some things that I had not up to now acknowledged  (some people are just plain bad). I don't know if those things are true, and with further experience its possible that my beliefs may again be revised. Or, maybe they are just opinions.

Seung Sahn, one of my favorite authors, has coined a phrase "Only Don't Know"  - meaning that we should always maintain a mind open to all possibilities. Another of my favorite authors, Shunryu Suzuki suggests that we keep a "Beginner's Mind", which means essentially the same thing. Yet a third author, Pema Chodron advises us to become "Comfortable with Uncertainty", which is a similar idea. This way of living requires that we free ourselves of the kind of opinion that often masquerades as belief, and root ourselves instead in the simple beliefs that tend to dovetail with the truth.

Scientists have already predicted the end of earth days - specifically the death of our sun and the resultant darkening ( and freezing) of the earth, leading to the end of life as we know it. That's another five billion years away. Or we could be hit by a meteor. It is all so unknowable that I wonder if it's even useful to harbor a belief in this regard.

I also have to wonder if Harold Camping himself truly believed his own prediction, or was able to grasp its full import. When asked how he would spend this day ( May 21, 2011 - the day he expected all the faithful to be raptured to heaven, including presumably, himself) he replied to the effect that he would spend the day reading the Bible and watching the TV coverage of rapture news from around the world. Which begs the question - was he expecting to be "Left Behind" ?

Manifest Destiny

I have been living in America for twenty-two years, and for the most part I feel quite at home here. I appreciate the political system, and though it can be expensive, there is a health-care system. When you call the police, the police show up, when you need an ambulance, you can count on one, except perhaps in a snowstorm. When you have business to conduct, there are clearly laid out rules which apply more or less for everyone, and when things go wrong there are channels for recourse. I mention these first because they are the things that have kept me from considering a move back to Trinidad with any degree of seriousness.

I have been learning about American History with my son as we prepare for his weekly 7th Grade Social Studies tests. Even if it is not the absolute truth, Americans take great pride in the idea of their 'exceptionalism', which has been a buzzword in the editorials lately, and I think for the most part the world buys into it. As a Naturalized American, I can't testify to exceptionalism, but what I can say is that I was unexpectedly moved to tears during my swearing in as a citizen. There is something very special about this country: it is the fact that its citizens take its specialness so seriously.

I realize that this belief in specialness is not consistently held by all Americans. Those who have fallen on hard times tend to focus more on what the government is doing wrong, rather than on the country's virtues, but I suppose that applies everywhere, as Maslow knew. Right now we are clamoring about the price of gas and consumer goods in general - but this isn't happening in a vacuum, and I don't think yelling about it will cause things to change any faster than the wheel of supply and demand dictates.

Let's have a little perspective: my brother recently returned from a trip to Uganda and a close brush with the border of Rwanda.

He says:
"The southern end of Uganda is quite scenic and appears very peaceful, but poverty is all around. Despite that, people appear to be content and even happy in what might appear to the western eye to be dire straits. They live communally and all have a little something to eat or they all starve together, however it is hard for those who aspire to something else - those who want to move up"

"Sometimes I wonder if my own value system is screwed up - these people wake up to birds singing, eat mataka ( green bananas pounded into a paste), breadfruit and fresh fruit every day, socialize
and dance into the evening as there is no electricity in many places."

Wedding in Uganda  - May 2011

Southern Uganda - May 2011

In the late seventies, I had a pen-pal from Uganda. Her name was Lizzie Nakakawa. During the time that we were corresponding, Idi Amin was the President of that country, and there were frequent bouts of unrest, though strangely enough - this was never mentioned in her letters. After a few exchanges, the letters just stopped coming, and I assumed the worst - that she'd been killed or maimed in a raid on her village. Of course, she could just as easily have lost interest in writing to me, or become busy with her own life.
I had many pen pals, but Lizzie was the most enigmatic. She sent me just one black and white photo of herself with her closely cropped afro, wearing a flowered skirt, a light colored blouse, low white pumps.. and a  megawatt smile. Those white shoes were the most intriguing thing. I often wondered if she wore them only for that picture, or whether they had some practical application elsewhere in her life. Of course, I never found out.   

There is no reason to believe that Ugandans love their country less than any of us love ours. It's not a matter of how good or bad the government is - it is a matter of identifying with the place where you were born and came to know yourself. For me, even though I have reservations about Trinidad socially and politically - the deep tugging that I feel once I get there cannot be mistaken for anything other than a sense of belonging that is inextricable from my very sense of self.

For almost a year, I have been trying to read the autobiography of  V.S.Naipaul ( The World is What It Is - Patrick French). V.S.Naipaul is one of my favorite authors, but the disdain he has shown for his country of birth (and countrymen) is hard to swallow. It is so extreme as to be a form of self-hate. It puzzled and saddened me to the point that I have not been able to finish reading the book.
I often hold Derek Walcott in my mind as a counterbalance to V.S. and his view. Here is a man who was born in St. Lucia, made Trinidad his home and embraced the entire Caribbean and indeed the whole world, suffusing his work with love songs to many lands - both overtly and subtly.

I love New York and I love America but I never touch the wellspring of myself as effortlessly as I do when I am 'home' in Trinidad. Every little curve of the hills I grew up gazing at seems like some feature of my own body, or that of some well-loved one. I am due to travel back in July and I know what I want to take back with me - it is the idea of Trinidadian exceptionalism. May it spread like a wildfire in the dry season.


*Top Photo: unattributed, taken in February or March 2011 off the Foreshore Highway, Trinidad.
It is a cloud formation in the shape of the island of Trinidad.
*Uganda photos - courtesy my brother, May 2011

Excuse me...

What causes some people to invest self-effacingly in the social ease of others, while other people are able to voice their feelings and insist on their preferences without undue concern for it?

Lately, I have been having the exhilirating experience of seeing my decisions piss people off. This, from a person whose passivity is so great that even those closest to me have no hint of its true depth.

When I was seven, my mother and I visited a friend of hers. My mother's friend asked if I wanted some milk. Easy enough, I said yes. She pulled down a glass from the cupboard, poured some milk into it and handed it to me. I took it, said thanks and raised it to my lips.
To my horror, there inside the glass - along with the milk, was a cobweb.

Now, a cobweb is different from a spider's web. A spider's web is silky and almost invisible.
A cobweb is a long abandoned spider's web which has been embalmed with dust and the opacity of disuse.  I saw it, paused, then carefully started drinking, having decided that I couldn't bring it to either adult's attention without causing embarassment for everyone. I drank without shaking the glass, and the cobweb co-operated - collapsing into a greyish thread-like mass which floated on the meniscus of the milk, with one tentacle still stuck against the glass. It was with a genuine sense of accomplishment that I finshed the glass of milk without the cobweb making contact with my lips.

I can follow the breadcrumbs from there through a forest of deferences all the way to the paralysing root canal episode which finally brought anger and outrage, and clarity about my passivity. That galvanizing event caused me to suddenly launch into a string of defiant 'no's' in the face of almost any request or suggestion, as if to aquiesce was some sort of suicide. It was bound to happen, I suppose - a kind of backlash. Having purged that venom somewhat, I have entered a considerably more pleasant pasture of options: "I'd rather not"; "I'm sorry, I can't"; "That doesn't work for me"; "I prefer X, thanks", and if need be I might just be able to say, "Excuse me, but there's something in my glass..."

At Least, In Pairs

Newsflash: Tail Bites Dog

As best as I can make out ( I did have to perform some intricate translation from video-game speak to current English), some hacker organization codenamed 'Anonymous' has shut down (hacked) the PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store as retaliation against Sony's attempts to sue them for hacking. Could neither of them see this coming?

Hackers run a healthy business servicing gamers who want to bypass difficult phases, artificially boost their reps and prematurely unlock the booty-chest of rewards for elevated prestige.
The hackers' latest strategy which has met with stern disapproval from Sony, is a 'jailbreak' which allows players to downgrade their PlayStation system to bypass the sophisticated upgrades which have all sorts of firewalls and retardants to 'creative gaming'. 

With the Network down, players can't link up online and have to play with the machine ghosts, rather than with their Avatar-clad Clansmen.
I suppose I should be glad that my son wants 'real human' interaction and refuses to play against the machine. He likes to chit-chat while doing battle: blue-tooth talking to Queens, Austria, Florida or where ever his buddies' bodies are hunkered down. My son, whose handle is Tizzik, can be heard calling to Ching-wing for cover, or chastising Krispy for shooting him by accident.
To speak with Ching-wing or Krispy today, Tizzik will have to make a long distance phone call, though I doubt there is anything they'd want to talk about now that the system is down. Funny how that is.

Luckily, Tizzik has many flesh-and-blood friends, (you know, like brick-and-mortar stores) twenty of whom came to his birthday party last month.
For the first time, girls were on the invited list, though only one brave member of that species showed.
My anxiety level went way up - didn't they travel in packs, or at least in pairs? We tried to keep her entertained with metal-ring puzzles and wooden 3D brain teasers, as well an origami kit.
For a moment it looked good - a couple of the boys got interested in the puzzles and left the gaming consoles. I got misty-eyed, thinking I had a real live party on my hands, but sadly some of the boys drifted back to the games, some went into the backyard, and we were back to the one birdie on the wall.

She was a real trouper, though - always smiling and polite. My husband and I loved her because she was on our side, i.e the outside. We catered to her every whim, and marveled at what great friends she and Tizzik must be for him to invite her here just to ignore her. We gawked covertly from the kitchen - a cordless free-standing, fully alert tween capable of coherent conversation - a classic model! We looked over at the boys, thumping on their control pads, yelping and howling - where on earth was she going to find a match?

Four I Follow

I love poetry - but having said that, let me also say that a lot of poetry goes over my head. I can't seem to stay with very long poems, or poems with too many painterly words like 'inchoate'. I hate the word 'inchoate' and will ditch any poem which contains it. There are poets who bang you over the head with their MFA degrees, and there are poets who just bang you over the head. Take Sylvia Plath. I heard she was brilliant but I could not approach her for years. I bought one of her books pledging to read it through - but I still haven't.


I have been attracted to the work of poets who use sound well. For me, it is as though the interlocking of sounds, their echo... is some kind of high logic, like inevitability, or an unavoidable truth.
Here are four I follow:



a small number 

So far, have managed, Not
Much.So far a few fractures, a few factions, a Few
Friends. So far, a husband, a husbandry, Nothing
Too complex, so far, followed the Simple
Instructions.Read them twice. So far, memorized three
  Moments,
Buried a couple deaths, those turning faces. So far two or
  Three
Sonnets. So far, some berrigan and Some
Keates. So far, a scanty list. So far, a dark wood. So far Anti
Thesis and then, maybe a little thesis. So far a small Number
Of emily's letters. So far, tim not dead. So far, Matt
not dead. So far, jim. So far, Love
And love, not so far. Not so love. So far, no-Hope.
So far, all face. So far scrapped and scraped, but Not
With grace. So far, not Very.
                                                           - Olena Kalytiak Davis


White Egrets 
I
Cautious of time's light and how often it will allow
the morning shadows to lengthen across the lawn
the stalking egrets to wriggle their beaks and swallow
when you, not they, or you and they, are gone;
for clattering parrots to launch their fleet at sunrise
for April to ignite the African Violet 
in the drumming world that dampens your tired eyes
behind two clouding lenses, sunrise, sunset,
the quiet ravages of diabetes.
Accept it all with level sentences
with sculpted settlement that sets each stanza;
learn how the bright lawn puts up no defenses
against the egrets stabbing questions and the night's answer.
                                                               
                                                                 - Derek Walcott


The Long Up 

You can see the
land flattening out
near the top. The
long up you've faced 
is going to stop.
Your eyes feast
on space instead 
of pitch as though
you'd been released.
The measured pace
you've kept corrupts
with fifty yards
to do - fifty
times as hard
against the blue. 

        - Kay Ryan
  

As Kingfishers Catch Fire 

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

         

                                  - Gerard Manley Hopkins

                            

Man Push Cart



Potato Guy's cart is the one on the right..

 Yesterday, I had decided that I would have a middle-eastern lunch of hummus, falafel, and an Israeli-type salad. I brought my own hummus from home, and was heading out onto Broadway to locate a few falafel balls and the salad. I went to one of the street carts - and was surprised to see a familiar face behind the counter of the cart on 39th and Broadway. It was 'Potato Guy', a Pakistani street vendor.

I have known Potato Guy for more than 20 years, which is about how long we have both been making our livings in the Fashion District of New York City. There was a time when I used to have a baked potato with sour cream and brown mustard (plus a sprinkling of chives) almost every day.  


We had not seen each other in such a long time that we couldn't recall each other's names, but neither wanted to admit it - so yesterday my name was 'Hey Sweetie!!' and his was 'Oh my God, how have you been?!''
He'd been struggling. He'd given up the potato cart and was now trying his hand at rice and beans with chicken. It was hard finding good people to work with, he said. He had tried for so long to make it...but was just surviving. He told me about a news article he had read in one of the Pakistani papers, about a freshly minted MBA who could not find a job, and so went out on a limb (literally), taking courses in plant husbandry, eventually finding a job managing a grove of fruit trees. According to Potato Guy, Fruit Guy was doing well. His takeaway from that story was that he should keep trying - if one thing doesn't work out, he should keep looking and moving forward.


Usually, the street vendors won't sell falafel balls separately, as they are used to garnish the meals which are their mainstay. However,I was going to walk away not only with the falafel balls, but also a container of rice and beans with chicken. Potato Guy did not want to take my money and I started to feel distress rising - difficult as it is for me to receive gifts and favors, and especially now after hearing his story. Finally, we settled on a compromise which we both could live with - half price.


Street vendors are somewhat like frontier people - as much for their little wagons and their hardiness as for their transient occupation of the cityscape. I like to think of them as the street keepers. Most of New York City's kiosks and carts are manned by South East Asians, which is to say Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians, but they aren't the only ones out here pushing carts: there is at least one Eastern European operating on my street corner serving breakfast fare: coffee, tea, doughnuts and bagels. Some of these men have wives and families back in their homelands, the street cart embodying at once their foray into an unfamiliar territory, and a lifeline to their families back home. It is no different a scenario than many of us as immigrants have faced, but I don't think any immigrant story expresses itself so literally as the street cart vendor peddling foods (often foreign to his own palate) so far away from home. As I left Potato Guy, with his upbeat outlook yet palpable despondence, it almost seemed like the cart was pushing the man.  

 

To Spring

My ivory helleboros

We may be staring down the barrel of a possible Nor' Easter, but Spring can't be turned back. Out in the yard there are stirrings: while it seems to me that the daffodils were slow to get going, and the tulips are reluctant to open their cups, the crocuses have spent themselves and the helleboros is already yawning. The red spear-like shoots of peony and the large circular crowd of hostos tips have already emerged; hydrangea buds are swollen, and creeping jenny sprouts have resurrected from the nodes of last year's growth. In my yard, helleboros is the de-facto herald of spring. They are the first ones out of the box, sometimes even before the last frost. I have two colors - ivory and purple. They are in full bloom and will remain so right through the summer. As usual, I am reluctant to touch anything in the yard for fear of removing something important. Which is not to say that I have a spectacular garden - only one whose every little inhabitant is of interest to me. I remember the first spring I was here, my neighbor came to help me do some weeding. In her zeal, she cut my peony shoots down to the ground. Oops. I cringed and bit my tongue. She has made amends with tomato and petunia seedlings by the handful every spring since. This spring, my most anticipated guests are the columbines (one deep plum with pink, one pure white) and the calla lilies (deep plum and pink varieties) which I planted last year. 
The columbines appeared just last year and I hope they'll be back. Aside from these, I hope for an interesting assortment of weeds, and couple of new hatchlings from the birdhouse which is already coiled inside with dry twigs and feathers, and has sheltered three crops of eggs since I put it up.
Here's to spring, here's to life.

blue wild flower

Getting the Whole Picture

Recently, I was watching a documentary about Alaska. It's a genre ( Alaskan documentaries) which seems to be proliferating in the wake of 'Sarah Palin's Alaska', which I found to be surprisingly interesting, by the way. Alaska the territory is an easy sell: breathtakingly beautiful, pristine, one of the last new frontiers. This particular documentary was looking at the effects of global warming on Alaskan ecosystems. In one scene, humpback whales were being filmed during communal bubble net fishing. There were two layers of filming taking place. Meaning, the on-screen team which was observing and filming the whales was itself being filmed by an unseen camera team - which at one point in the scene was flushed out of hiding by yet another camera team filming from third remove. It was just a film-making technique, but somehow this sudden unmasking was unsettling to me. We don't always see the whole picture. Some things reveal themselves only with time, but some things are deliberately hidden.

I had been shopping for a new dentist, and getting ready to ditch my dentist of the past twenty years. It was a painful process, in no small part because of my difficulty with change, letting go, moving on. But also because of a feeling of betrayal. In this case, when the full picture came to light, it appeared that I got two unnecessary root canals courtesy of a tag-team effort by my dentist and his buddy, the endodontist.

What outed them was the fact that the diffuse jaw pain which had initially prompted me seek treatment, had not varied in quality or intensity a full 2 weeks after the procedure. I confronted the dentists individually - each of whom responded by offering the other's services for free - for another root canal on the last live tooth in the neighborhood - the wisdom tooth. I was incredulous that either of them thought they could ever get me to say Ah again. I responded by visiting The Good Doctor Moore, getting a diagnosis that "this bad boy has to go", and pulling the wisdom tooth. I have been pain free ever since. 

That still left me with two teeth to reconstruct at a hefty cost (even with insurance) and a boiling rage that kept me paralyzed for months. Should I sue them? I didn't have the stamina for it. I felt powerless and to some extent, violated. I also felt that I was partially to blame for my own predicament. I should have questioned more, trusted less.

Finally, as the year opened, I took a deep breath and started interviewing new dentists. I walked into one office and walked right back out. I didn't need to see that dentist - the place was such an energy sink.

I have finally settled on a new dentist who will not be perfect and who will not have my complete trust, but with whom I feel a level of comfort.  I am still somewhat angry, and I have become more assertive not only with my health care professionals, but with authority figures in general. However, It feels good to move forward. Hell, it feels good to move, period.

Killing my Darlings

Passion. Nothing worthwhile gets done without it and yet sometimes the object of one's passion, the inspiration, is so out of harmony with everything else that's already paid for (or mortgaged) in your life that there is simply no reasonable ground for it to occupy. This might be something that you cannot afford, whether financially, emotionally, morally - or by some other measure which has meaning for you. This would be something which has the potential to destabilize everything else.

Simply put, we either pursue the object of our passion or we don't. Giving up the pursuit of what ignites us and makes us feel so alive is hard. Many times the outward pursuit is relinquished, but the inner self pines while going through the motions of what is 'left' of life.

As I look back, I see that this had become a pattern for me.
It started when I was eleven, with my first crush on the boy next door. I thought he was the most intriguing and enigmatic creature. We would fly our kites, ride our bikes, run through the rain and race stick boats down the flooded streets, climb trees and fight 'berry wars', pelting each other with the small inedible fruit of the largest tree in the park. Though we would hardly speak to each other directly, I would imagine that we were 'together' within the larger circle of our respective brothers and other friends who were always present.

When he got a girlfriend who was pretty and 'girly' I was devastated. There was no way I could compete. I was a hardcore tomboy, skinny with my hair cropped short. She had shoulder length fling-able hair, wore nail polish and lip gloss and sported two-piece bathing suits while I had not yet graduated from my Speedo Racerback.  It took me a long time to recover from the loss of what I never really had.

In college I fell for another boy, and while those affections were returned, things were complicated by the fact that we both had significant others. This was the first instance of my having to give up the object of my passion for a greater good - and it was hard. For years I did not move on, though I appeared to. There would be other instances, culminating most recently with a yoga practice with which I'd become too involved, to the detriment of my family life. Ultimately, I would find it hard to become too deeply involved with anything at all.

Weaving its way through all of these disappointments has been the practice of poetry writing.
Though the outcome of my efforts has been mixed, writing has yielded at least one very important lesson that I have at last applied to my life in general.

In the process of writing poems, sometimes there is a metaphor, line or word that we are so enamored with that we insist on it. Not that this element might be so bad, on the contrary, it might be brilliant - but our reluctance to take it out prevents us from discovering whether or not it really serves the poem. It is for just this reason that we are strongly advised to remove it.

In life, however, it's tough to question our natural affinities - and even tougher to eliminate them. It's unsettling to think we might have misplaced our love, or our attachments. And finally, it is crushing to think that something we love dearly might not be good for us or serve the highest good of our lives.

Let's be real - many of us might be quite content to leave the 'highest good' out of the equation. What is that anyway, but conjecture? Who can prove what is the highest good, and what combination of elements might bring it about? The argument can end right here and many times it does, however the poetry metaphor appeals to me for a few reasons:

Passion Located and Joy Defined
Passion can clearly be seen to reside with the creator (or experiencer), not capriciously popping up in random objects or situations. The opposite argument - that some object, practice or other person is the originator or source of one's passion, seems hollow. Joy in this context is seen to be what arises naturally out of the engagement of passion with whatever it chooses.  

Editorial License
Of necessity the writer is split - being both the creator and the primary audience for the creation. The editorial function is what causes and simultaneously bridges this gap. It's a kind of holy trinity: the creator gives, the editor takes away, the audience yeas-or-nays - but they're all you. The real-life application of editorial license encourages us to make hay while the sun shines, and to make our own sunshine if necessary.

Making Hay, Making Sunshine
The editor always has something to work with. The creator may become despondent, and the audience might be clueless, but the editor can evaluate what she's got based on her goals. Taking something away spurs the creator on; the editor is in charge of the storyline because she is not wedded to it. She is constantly working with what she has to maximize the Venn of the creator's passion and the audience's joy. 

The Law of Indeterminate Expression
The poem you end up with is never the poem you set out to write. This is an ironclad truth, and one the poet is deeply grateful for (though not at first). You may think you're one step away from perfection, but everything you change changes everything else and you just have to keep going with it till it resolves. If this is done faithfully, the result will say something more important, and say it better, than the original attempt could. Knowing and accepting this from the start takes some of the sting out of the vicissitudes of life.

Inspiration, Not Expiration
The writer is not bound by (or to) what inspires her or her writing. There is no obligation to pay homage, or to ascribe it any unusual power. The writer is free (indeed, required) to take inspiration and bend it to her own purpose. Either that, or it will bend her. Now I fully understand why the poet Kay Ryan told me (when I gushed to her about how much she inspired me), "Go forth and do differently".

As in poetry, chances are neither my passion, my joy, nor I will perish with the thing I must edit out of my life. No doubt something will be lost, something I will miss - except for the belief that in the end, good can and will come without it.