How Is This Change?

I've been out of touch with the wide world as I've had to deal with the dramas in my own life. And I've wanted to give the new prez some room. But I'm not happy with some of the things he's been doing. Actually, to say I'm "unhappy" is an understatement. I am appalled that the Obama Administration is keeping alive Bush's practice of rendition.

Here's an excerpt from Ruben Navarrette Jr. column today:

"We've had a glimpse at some of Obama's policies, which look an awful lot like those of his predecessor.

"For one thing, the Obama administration recently carried out its first work-site immigration raid in Bellingham, Washington, despite the fact that immigrant activists despise such raids for dividing families and turning lives upside down.

"Then there are Obama's anti-terror policies. While Obama ordered closed the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he also kept alive the CIA's authority to carry out 'rendition,' the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to other countries where they can be tortured. That outraged civil libertarians.

"So did the position of the Obama Justice Department that 600 prisoners at the U.S. air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. That was also the Bush's administration's view.

"The third strike for many on the left was the attempt by the Obama Justice Department to quash—in another echo of Bush policy—a lawsuit challenging the government's rendition and warrantless wiretapping programs.

"Last week, a federal Appeals Court in San Francisco rejected the Obama administration's request for an emergency stay in the case. Government lawyers signaled that they would continue fighting to keep the information secret on national security grounds.

"That sparked an angry response from Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the plaintiffs in the case.

"'This is not change,' Romero said in a statement. 'This is definitely more of the same. ... If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.'"

I can only concur with Romero.

Read more here...

Days Four & Five

Day Four

I have no idea what the prez did today. I no longer have television, and the headlines on the internet(s) were all about various disgusting murders. (What a strange adjective to use: as though some murders are not disgusting.)

It was cold outside. And cloudy. I would lay odds I was not stepping a foot outside this house today.

I got up and did the Kum Nye massage again. I first learned about Kum Nye yoga from one of my teachers, Vicki Noble. It is very slow and deliberate. You perform one movement and then you sit and “expand” the feeling. Often as I am “expanding” the feeling, my mind wanders and finds interesting subjects to daydream about. I am not very good at sitting still, yet sitting still is something that is very good for me. I benefit from routines. I benefit from a quiet, serene life. I thought everyone was like this and I discovered this is not so. Some people do better when they are very active and run here and run there.

I would like to be a world traveller. I used to be. I would like to flit from here to there. But my psyche and my bodacious body want some down time. Major down time. “Be still and be quiet!” they cry. Ahhhh, there now.

I ate a fabulous breakfast of one basted egg, a grated baked sweet potato (like hash browned potatoes only supposedly healthier), and steamed vegetables.

And then I became a cooking queen. I put my laptop on the kitchen table with an episode of Numb3rs playing. I tried to find an epi that wasn’t about killers or psychos. I like the mathematical part of the show. I don’t always understand it, but I like the intellectual exercise. And I like the characters. I want to learn to stop multi-tasking, but I decided to give myself a break today. I was going to do what made me comfortable and happy. And I wanted to listen to a story while I worked.

I had soaked aduki beans and black beans (separately), so I drained and rinsed them. Then I put the black beans in one large soup pot and the aduki beans in another. I added a piece of kombu to each and poured in enough water to cover the beans and then some and I put them on to boil.

While they cooked, I put water into another pot. I dropped in two cups of butternut squash. (Mario had cut one up for me last night.) Then I cubed (sort of) one carrot, one daikon radish, and one parsnip and added them to the brew. Then I chopped up an onion and dropped that into the soup. I talked to the ingredients as I put them in, as always. “Oh you beautiful carrot! You are the best carrot in the world. A daikon radish. Wow! You are very firm! And onion, you’re so amazing, you make me cry!” I added a piece of kombu to the mix, and then I merrily turned up the burner. I had three different dishes cooking.

Then I grabbed my computer and went into the living room and curled up on the couch under one of my dad’s quilts. I started reading Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color. It’s research for the novel I just wrote in Arizona, The Old Mermaid. I was particularly interested in the article on plaçage. This was where mixed-race women became mistresses of French or Spanish men in Louisiana in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They could not legally marry. These liaisons often called left-handed marriages. Some of the women involved in these relationships were known as Les Sirènes.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t know they were called Les Sirènes when I was writing The Old Mermaid. It was one of those many synchronicities that happens when I’m writing.

From most accounts, these relationships seemed to suit the needs of both partners given the restrictions of the society they lived in. I’m not saying these relationships were equal. I’m saying as far as I can tell from the research, the women were not coerced into these “marriage.“ Of course the big ol’ elephant in the room caveat is that mixed-race and black women didn’t have many choices about what they could do with their lives. And by definition, whatever a slave did at the behest of a master was coercion and not a result of free will. That said, most often the women in these left-handed marriages were freed (if they were not already free) and their offspring were freed. Most often the men took care of the women all of their lives, even after they married a white woman. (Sometimes the relationships continued after marriage; sometimes they didn’t.) This seems to especially be the case if the men were French. The children were often educated and set up in businesses.

Makes me tired thinking about it. If I actually had a choice between being a field slave or being a mistress to a white man who would take care of me the rest of my life, I would chose being a mistress. I don’t think I would have to think about it twice. What a Sophia’s choice.

As far as I can tell, many of these relationships were loving. I depicted such a relationship in my book. Although it is definitely not a relationship of people who are equals socially or economically, they do love each other--as far as it goes. Can it ever be “true” love if one person has so much power over another person?

When it was time, I went and looked at my stews. After a couple of hours, I pulled the kombu out of the black beans. The water was now just a bit over the beans. When I lifted out a spoon of the beans and blew on them, the skin curled, and they tasted done. I grated a couple of teaspoons of gorgeous fresh yellow ginger. I tapped the grater over the black brew and the yellow dropped into the beans and liquid, reminding me for a moment of tiny suns against an indigo night. I cooked that a little longer, but it was essentially finished. Gingered black beans. Mmmm!

I added a couple of cups of cubed butternut squash to the aduki beans. In the last year of her life, my friend Linda couldn’t eat much. I would desperately try to find something she could stand. I read in one cookbook that aduki beans were good for people who were recovering from illness. So I made this aduki bean and butternut squash soup. Four ingredients: aduki beans, kombu seaweed, butternut squash, and water. (In the end you can add soy sauce or salt if you like.) For Linda, I pureed the soup. She didn’t have any back teeth by then, so she couldn’t chew much. She loved this soup. It was practically all she would eat for months. Every time I made it, I infused it with songs and my love and my hopes for her healing. I think it did keep her alive during those months. She rallied a bit and was able to eat other foods for a few months until she died.

But she would rave about “Kim’s soup.”

I still miss her so much.

I looked at the butternut squash/daikon radish/parsnip soup. I make this kind of soup when I feel like I need to get my mind and body right. Usually I would add some burdock root but I had forgotten to get any. I took the kombu out of the soup and cut it up into little pieces and then put it back. The soup was so beautiful! The butternut squash seemed golden yellow now and filled the pot with sunshine.

I love soup.

Mario usually doesn’t like this particular soup, so I decided to add some Navy beans from a can of Eden beans we gad leftover from our trip. They are organic and soaked in water and kombu (instead of salt), so they’re actually pretty good. I put a can of these beans into the soup. I tasted it. It was very sweet. I wasn’t surprised. Daikon radish and butternut squash are sweet. I didn’t mind the sweetness, but I wanted to see if I could get the seasoning right so that Mario could enjoy it, too. I ground a bunch of black pepper into it. Tasted it. Still a bit sweet. I ground some sea salt into it. Tasted it. Better. Some soy sauce at the table would help deepen the flavors and take the edge of the sweetness, too.

So that was that.

I felt very satisfied. I got myself a bowl of the aduki bean soup and took it into the living room. I got under my quilt again and began eating. The soup was so rich. I could taste the healing! I thought of Linda. She would have put more salt in it. But she craved salt and always salted all her food. I wondered how her daughter was doing.

After lunch, I sat down and did some writing. Outside it began to snow.

Later, Mario and I had dinner. He put brown rice into the butternut squash soup. I put in rice pasta, which made it like minestrone, only without the tomatoes. It was delicious.

I wrote more words. Eventually we went to bed. I read a little from A History of Last Night’s Dreams by Rodger Kamenentz.

And then I fell to sleep and dreamed.

Day Five

I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. It was as if when I opened Kamenentz’s book, I gave myself permission to dream again. I have very vivid dreams and have since I was a little girl. Sometimes I can have half a dozen or more a night. They can be terrifying or mystical. In 2001, I decided (again, again) to figure out my life. I looked through my journals and typed up about one third of the dreams I had written down over the years. By the time I was finished I had 60,000 words or more. And then I read what I had typed. My dreams were so filled with violence: war, murder, apocalypse, rape, incest, and more murder. I knew this because I had dreamed them, but to read them all at once was quite disturbing.

I put them away and haven’t looked at them since. And over the last year or so, I haven’t dreamed as much as I used to. Kamenetz postulates that by interpreting our dreams we are missing the true value of them--we are dampening their power. What does that actually mean? I’m not sure yet. I heard him on the radio and when he talked about particular dreams, he seemed to be interpreting them. It may be a semantic thing.

I’ll let you know when I know.

In any case, I dreamed and dreamed. I was a wandering, traveling from one place to the next, in the dark, in the light, in the rain, in the snow. In one dream I had a foster child who began varnishing the bathroom, and so I had to call in help because of the fumes. The most startling dream happened when a tall dark man I knew leaned over me and breathed in my ear. He just breathed. It was very sensual. Not sexual, but sensual, if that makes any sense. I wasn’t frightened because I knew and liked him. But I couldn’t move for a time. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. He kept breathing. Eventually he moved away and disappeared.

Very odd.

It was one of those mornings where neither Mario or I wanted to get up. We’d awaken and curl up around each other and then fall to sleep again. And I would dream. Then we’d wake up and shift and fall to sleep again. A wonderful dreamy morning.

For breakfast, I peeled and then cut up two parsnips into quarters lengthwise. (So they looked like French fries.) I put a few drops of olive oil in my palms and then I rubbed each little fry between my palms. I put them in a glass roasting pan. I ground a little pepper over them and added a dash of sea salt. Then I put them in the oven at 375.

While they baked, I did my Kum Nye massage.

I must seem obsessed with the minutiae of my life lately. It’s true, I suppose. I am trying to fit back into my life. For eight years much of my focus was on what was happening countrywide and worldwide. Of course I still care about all of those things, but I need some parochial perspective.

Starting with my own life.

When the parsnips were ready, I basted a couple of eggs. Mario came down and set the table. He put vegetables on our plates and cut up an avocado and apple.

The parsnips were a hit. It must be nice for Mario to have me doing some of the cooking again. Too often, he’s the one making all the meals. That just gets tiresome.

I read a little of Conscious Eating by Gabriel Cousens, M.D. after breakfast. At first I was excited by it. He said that he’d figured out that there is no “average” person and so telling everyone to be on the same diet or take the same supplements was ridiculous. This was something I had been saying for years, but I didn’t know if I was right or not. As I kept reading I learned about something called lectin which is in most foods but is very high in grains and legumes and many of the vegetables we eat regularly. This substance apparently causes an immune response (allergies and other inflammatory responses) in most people. It’s similar to the response some people have to gluten.

I read this and thought, “What the hell can I eat?”

Some of it rang true to me, however. I do soak beans and grains for 24 to 48 hours before I cook them. Before I started doing that, I had a lot of trouble with beans. But even now, I often feel lethargic and little sick to my stomach after eating beans. According to one article I read, this nausea could be caused by the toxins in legumes. I am trying to rid myself of asthma and other allergies. Maybe I’ll try to reduce some of the foods that I eat that are high in lectin.

*sigh*

Midday, I bundled up as much as I could and Mario and I went for a walk. The sun was out, but it was cold, windy, and icy. Snow covered the gorge cliffs, and if I could have seen much of it, I probably would have thought it was beautiful. Mario said I reminded him of Iron Man, except I was in black. I said, “Only if it was a Cold Iron Man.”

We walked down by the creek. We hadn’t been there since we returned. Rocks were still filling up the bed from the slide. It hardly looked like a river any more, just an accumulation of rocks with a bit of water running through it.

It was my first time out of the house since I went to acupuncture on Friday. Brrrr.

I looked at the empty lot across the street where the boys had been riding their trail bikes a few days ago. I could see a path. They had obviously been riding a lot while we were away. I stood on top of the hill and sang a little song that will hopefully scare away any more trouble in this place. I don't want to deal with this.

But I will.

Once I got inside my warm house, I decided to look at the news. Many businesses will deliver their quarterly reports tomorrow. They are expected to be the worse quarterly reports in a decade. Nothing I could do about that. I listened to President Obama’s weekly address. He said more people applied for unemployment last week than any time in the last twenty-six years. (I just noticed he looks a little like Tuvok from Star Trek Voyager, and he sounds a lot like him.)

Man. This week should be interesting. (And not because Prez Obama looks like Tim Russ and sounds like Tuvok.)

I looked at the White House website. It was nice going there and not seeing Bush. I went to the page of all the presidents and I scrolled through their pictures. I noticed two things: (1) Most of them are dead. So for all the Sturm und Drang that accompanies any life, even a president’s, everyone ends up in the same place. (2) They’re all men. At least half of those puppies should be women. Come on.

Do you think the world would be a better place if more women were in power?

I used to have an answer to that question, but not any more. At least not tonight.

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Me & the First Hundreds Day: Three

Day Three

President Obama lifted the so-called gag rule today. On Bush’s first day in office, he reinstated the gag rule that Clinton had lifted after Reagan instated it. In essence the gag rule meant that no clinics getting any kind of international aid from the U.S. could even talk about abortion let alone perform any. It also prevented these agencies from distributing any birth control, including condoms.

That’s done with for now. That’s one for women’s rights, for freedom of speech, for science.

I woke up feeling like I was coming down with something. I sat on the couch and did some Kum Nye yoga, which includes about an hour of massage. I also called the acupuncturist. I had wanted to go for a while without any healthcare providers touching my body, looking at my body, or making judgments about my health and my body. But thems the breaks.

I made myself some oatmeal with banana for breakfast. I knew it wouldn’t sustain me. Everyone is different, but for me, I need some protein in the morning. I was a vegetarian for about ten years, and I just kept getting sicker and sicker. Once I started eating some wild fish and the occasional organic and humanely raised dead bird, I started feeling better. Plus once I began eating more protein, I didn’t have those huge highs and lows that come from eating a steady diet of carbos. I still don’t eat any red meat or dairy.

Anyway, I knew the oatmeal wouldn’t hold me, but I couldn’t eat eggs every morning. I tried getting the house into some kind of order after breakfast. I was still hoping I would find my mother’s ring. When Mom died last year, we each took one of her rings. I kept the one I have in my Church of the Old Mermaids (cigar) box, which I take with me when I go on retreat. It’s my traveling altar/sacred place. When I was showing the box and its contents to my sister in Santa Cruz, I realized the ring was not there. I was in a panic. Mario was sure we would find it when we got home.

I didn’t find it when we got home. And I kept losing other things. I lost my keys for a couple of days when we got home. Lost one of the telephone rechargers. But my mom’s ring: How could I lose that? I was determined not to beat up on myself about it though. It was just a thing. My mother was part of me. I had her DNA. It was not a tragedy to lose her ring.

Still, I wished I hadn’t lost it.

As I prepared to go to the acupuncturist, I felt scared and vulnerable. I hate going to doctors, naturopaths, and most any healthcare person. I usually don’t mind going to the acupuncturist, but today I was nervous. I haven’t always been afraid of doctors. One day I woke up and I was afraid. It probably didn’t happen that way, but it feels like it. Just like I used to love flying, and then one day I was petrified to fly. Although in that case, I can trace the fear to a flight I took coming back from Europe. Nearly every year, I worked hard (while going to college full-time) and I saved up enough money to travel over the Xmas break. I almost always went to Europe with my then-boyfriend. (I backpacked all over Europe when I was eighteen with a girlfriend. Later I went to Greece, England, Ireland, and Cypress with the boyfriend.)

I loved traveling. I loved flying. The first time I flew was for my high school trip. We went to London. It was great! My last trip back from Europe wasn’t so great. The plane took a dive, I thought we were all going to die, and the stewardess thought we were all going to die. We didn’t die. But apparently the trauma of the “almost” fried my nervous system and I’ve been terrified of flying ever since. I used to fly every year. Since 1980, I’ve flown three times. I was terrified out of my mind each time. I was told if I flew I would get over the fear. I flew; I didn’t get over it. My oldest sister is afraid of flying, too. She does it, but she hates it. She is terrified each and every time. She is braver than I am.

How did I start talking about this? I was getting ready for the acupuncturist and being fearful. Man. If I could change anything in my life with a snap of the fingers, I would change that part of myself: I would ask that my perpetual fear and anxiety be disappeared so that I could be a normal human being--with a normal amount of fear.

It’s a strange thing to admit your fears. I did it often on Furious Spinner because I don’t think mental illness is anything to be ashamed of. A mental disorder is an illness just like diabetes. But being afraid or having anxiety is not something many people admit. And no one ever understands someone else’s fears. Mario doesn’t like speaking in public, for instance. Most people I know get nervous speaking in front of a group of people. Not me. I could talk to a crowd of a million people. A billion people. I have always been good with crowds. But don’t put me on a plane or send me to the doctor.

I took a shower before the appointment. I gave myself a pep talk. I had to start being easier on myself. Quit trying so hard. In fact, quit trying. Just have a good time. Relax. Or don’t relax.

I got out of the shower and went into my room (next to the living room) and sat on the floor, in my b-day suit, and brushed my hair in front of an oval mirror that sits on the floor and leans against the wall. I’m not really sure why I did this, but I did.

I sat there as naked as the day I came out of my mother’s womb and brushed my hair. The oval mirror framed me perfectly. A friend of mine had etched the words “Thou art goddess” in the mirror. I thought, “Yep, I’m a little naked goddess. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just all accept ourselves for who we are?“ As I sat there, on my left, I noticed the Old Mermaids box on the little altar/table next to the mirror. I sighed and felt a twinge of guilt about my mother’s ring. My mother’s ring.

I looked to my right. Right at my line of sight because I was on the floor was a bunch of necklaces hanging from the closet door knob. Amongst the necklaces was also a blue and gold pouch I’d picked up in Santa Fe a few years ago. I reached out and felt the pouch, on the off-chance the ring I put the ring in there. I didn’t feel a ring. I felt a marble the faeries had left for me. (Long story, another time. Yes, even longer than this one.) I took the pouch off the doorknob anyway and I opened it up and poured the contents into my hand: one marble and one mother’s ring.

When I had gone to one of my workshops, I must have put the ring into the pouch so that I could take it with me as a talisman. And I had forgotten.

I hate when I do stuff like that.

But I was very happy I had found the ring. Ecstatic even. I thought about the sequence of events that led me to sit on the floor in the first place: I was in the world naked, accepting myself, framed by the words “thou art goddess” and then I found what I was looking for. In this case, it was my mother’s ring.

Acceptance. I had to remember that.

Remembering who I am. That would be good, too.

I went to the acupuncturist. Then drove home. On the way home, I heard President Obama had ordered air strikes in Pakistan. I never understand how the United States gets away with bombing other countries. What if some country came and bombed parts of our country because they thought our citizens were going to harm them? We’d go to war with them, wouldn’t we? But apparently Pakistan is still our ally. It is part of the war mentality I don’t understand. The news said sixteen people were killed. Sixteen people. Were they civilians? Children? They were somebody’s children. I wondered what it be like for Obama as he went to sleep tonight. Would he think of those sixteen people?

Mario and I had a dinner of rice, beans, veggies, and baked yam. We played Scrabble.

And then I fell to sleep on the couch watching Numb3rs on my computer.

I dreamed it was raining and I saw Pegasus flying up into the clouds. No one else saw it but me and I wondered if that meant there was something wrong with me.

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Me & the First Hundred Days: Two

Day Two

Got up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Although I’m not quite sure what that means.

I did get up after about seven hours of sleep. I dreamed, but the story faded as I quickly straightened the covers over the bed. I said good morning world and looked outside. The sunlight was green. Didn’t know what that meant either. End of the world as we knew it or just another dreary winter day in the Pacific Northwest?

The phone rang soon after I got up, but I didn’t answer it. That’s one of my rules that I often break: Don’t answer the phone until after I eat.

Did you ever think about that expression: answering the phone. Did the phone ask us a question that needed answering?

Yesterday I didn’t get in any nourishing food, so I was determined this day would be different. I turned on the television. We still had service, so I got to watch President Obama signing an executive order that would close Gitmo in a year and end the use of torture.

Yes, yes, yes! I never thought our country would ever unlawfully imprison people and torture them. It was naïve, I know. Any country and any people can drift into fascism if they don’t stand up to the power structure. I stood up. Millions of us stood up; this time it didn’t do any good. We couldn’t stop the war and we couldn’t stop them from torturing people in our name.

Please let that all be over now.

How does it happen that we begin to believe it is all right to deliberately hurt other people?

Today I heard trail bikes across the road from us in an empty lot near the day care. I put on my coat and went into the icy wind to tell them to stop. I couldn’t get the attention of the boys who were riding the bikes. It was too cold; I had to go back into the house.

Listening to that kind of noise--the whine of trail bikes or weed wackers or the roar of motorcycles feels like torture to me. I’m not being glib about it. I’m serious. Those kinds of noises physically hurt me. Same with barking dogs. There’s an inconsistency in the sound that never turns into white noise and it remains painful.

I called a real estate office in town to try and find the man who owned the empty lot. Or find the man I thought owned the lot. He wasn’t in, so I called the police. I found out it wasn’t illegal to ride the bikes in town unless they were trespassing. I hoped they were trespassing. We would have to move if they kept it up.

Last time I lived in a place where I was subjected to that kind of noise day in and day out, I went a little bonkers. I had to quit my job as branch librarian because of illness (caused by the materials that were used when they remodeled my branch). Every day I sat in our little apartment and listened to a man and his son ride trail bikes around the small lot near us. And I listened to the truck come and go inches from my door. Listened to them rev the motor.

One day I went over to ask the truck driver to be a little quieter and a girl called me a bitch. And then I saw red. I thought that was something people made up. But I saw red. Or I saw the world change. Or I changed. I went crazy. I wanted to hurt the girl. So I went after her. She ran from me. Got into her car. I raised my hand to hit her. I brought my hand down, to strike her. My skin touched her skin, and I suddenly came back into my body--came back to my senses.

I apologized. I told her it had been wrong of me to come after her, especially when she got into her car. I told her that. I told her I had no right, no matter what she said to me. When her brother came back--in his big noisy truck--he was furious. I could see he wanted to hurt me. I strode right up to him and told him I was sorry. I volunteered to go to the police. That freaked them out: Why did this loony bin want to get the police involved?

Soon after we found a house in another county to rent, and we moved.

Of course, that was fifteen years ago. I was older now. Wiser. I wasn’t going to let some kids on trail bikes drive me out of my home.

Or maybe I would, but today I wasn’t going to worry about it.

I made my version of a frittata for a late breakfast. I cut up some crimini mushrooms into little bits along with some red onions and put them in a glass pie plate. I added a dash of olive oil, mixed it all up, and put them in the oven for a few minutes. While that was baking, I cut up a handful of chard. Then I beat two eggs with a whisk. I pulled the ‘shrooms and onions out of the oven. I dropped in the chard, and then I poured the eggs over it all. (It’s a very flat frittata when I use the pie plate. If I wanted it deeper, I would use something smaller.)

I put all that in the oven after I made certain the chard wasn’t sticking up out of the egg stuff. Then I ripped up a few pieces of lettuce. I grated carrot over the lettuce. In a jar, I put a bit of fish oil. (You could use olive oil if you’re veggie; I wanted the omega oils, and flax oil doesn’t agree with me.) Then I squeezed in some lime. I added a couple cloves of garlic I pressed. I shook it all up together and then poured it over my salad. A few minutes later, I took the frittata out of the oven. Easy as pie! It was delicious. Everything organic, of course.

And of course I talked to the food while I was preparing my meal. Many years ago, I dreamed I was at this Romanian woman's house or restaurant. This is what I wrote in my dream journal, “As she is cooking she is telling me little bits of Romanian wisdom. She seems a bit superstitious, yet I hesitated to call it that. We step outside and she murmurs and motions and tells me we should always talk to the spirits in everything.”

I heed her advice; I talk to everything.

Later in the day, I got some writing work done. Yeah! The house was still wrecked, but I sometimes seem to draw clutter to me like Pigpen drew dirt. And this is strange because I don’t save things. I don’t collect many things. It’s when I’m writing: I have books everywhere. That’s the bulk of the clutter. I just need to put the books on the shelves. My bookshelves are very orderly. I have the books in order by subject and in the subject area they are alphabetical by the author’s last name.

Hey, I’m a librarian, writer, and researcher. My books have got to be in some kind of order or I would spend half my time looking for books.

Before my Healers Circle, I boiled rice spaghetti pasta and baked a fillet of wild Alaskan salmon. I heated up some of the vegetables Mario had steamed yesterday. I threw these things together in a big beautiful yellow bowl, added a few drops of olive oil, and then tossed them all together. We had another quick, easy, and nourishing meal.

At least this day I was feeding myself well.

Then I went out into the cold and dark and drove to the library. I had started this healers circle last summer. (No possessive apostrophe on purpose. It's not our circle; it is a circle of healers.) I was feeling more and more that we need to look out for each other in our own communities. So I tried to gather together people in our community who were doing different kinds of healing work. For our first circle, we had a nurse, a couple Reiki practitioners, a shamanic practitioner, Qi gong teacher, an ecopsychologist, and a few other people. It was great!

I started out each circle with drumming. It amazed me then and it still amazes me how many people do not take to drumming naturally. They often seem self-conscious. I feel percussion is something innate in us--I mean, listen to our hearts. And I believe healing is not an intellectual activity. I think healing happens and what we’re thinking doesn’t have a lot to do with it. It’s about groovin’ and movin’ and getting out of the way so that our bodies can do what comes naturally.

I could be wrong. But that’s what I feel.

We usually have someone demonstrate what they do or some new technique they’ve learned, and then we all do some Reiki or energetic healing on one another. (At this point you might be wondering if it works or are we just a bunch of crazy people. Is it real? I ask myself these questions all the time, and I ask people to document what happens to them after we have these circles. The people who have chronic pain have reported relief of their pain for up to three days. When I first started doing this kind of work, I thought those kinds of results meant it didn’t work. But then the people who were relieved of their pain for those three days said it was a little miracle for them to have any relief at all. (And better for their livers than the pain meds, which also didn’t make the pain go away forever.)

So I don’t know the answer. Sometimes I gotta let the mystery be.

This night, the hostess of the circle didn’t have us drum. I missed that part of it, but I let go. I have to learn not to try and control everything. Maybe she was right--maybe we didn’t need the drumming.

I had a good time seeing everyone, but I was bushed and close to tears most of the time. I felt so tenderhearted.

I am so unsure of so many things.

And it’s good to admit that.

The woman taught us a self-healing technique. It was very relaxing. Unfortunately, I ate some of the gluten-free dairy-free cookies someone had made. They were scrumptious, but they did have sugar in them. And something else that didn’t agree with me. My ears started ringing more than usual. I wanted to kick myself. I have been so good at not eating anything when I go out--for twenty-five years!--but it can feel isolating. And tonight, I felt as though she had made the cookies in part for me. So I ate them. They were good. But I should have had one instead of four.

Ah well.

My second day of the one hundred was better than the first. I ate mostly good food.

What were my other goals?

I can’t remember.

What a fruitcake.

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Me & the First Hundred Days: One

(I think I'm going to start using a pencil name for some of my work. I may change my mind about that. Right now Lily Crow is writing Me and the First Hundred Days and a few other things. She pretty much shares my life. I should give her husband a different name, but I didn't since I'm not really trying to hide the fact that Lily Crow is a pen name, pseudonym, alias, nom de plume, why bother? Anyway, I'm going to see if I can transform myself (in a loving and accepting way) over the next hundred days. It may all crash and burn. It may not. See what you think.)

Me & the First Hundred Days

by Lily Crow

I believe it was President Roosevelt who started the brouhaha over the first hundred days of a new administration. He and Congress tried to get the country out of the depression with the New Deal. Congress enacted every program Roosevelt asked for during the first hundred days. Since then, apparently, every president has hated the fact that they are often measured by their first hundred days. I say it’s a good opportunity to set some goals. For the prez and for me.

I would like to get out of my depression. I would like to leap out of my funk. I would like to begin (again) my brave new life. Our country has been in the grip of an administration who defiled our constitution, put the economy in the dumpster, ignored science to the peril of our world, and vacated our civil liberties. I am hopeful that is all behind us.

So I'd like to put all my personal demons behind me, too.

A few months ago, within the space of a few days, two different people said I talked “as if it’s all over.” I realized they were right. After years of illness, after facing the fact of two failed careers, in the midst of grieving over the sudden death of my mother, I had started to think of my life as being over. I was tired of doctors. I was tired of my body and mind always going on the fritz. I was weary of burying friend after friend. I couldn’t seem to find the joy in my life.

I don’t know why I just wrote that paragraph in the past tense. I am tired now; I am still weary; and I am looking for the joy! I don’t want to keep seeking answers elsewhere. I don’t trust my own intuition or my own knowledge, but I need discover what sense I have. I need to get my groove back (with nods to Stella). I am too young to quit and too old not to have some wisdom!

So I’m going to take advantage of the first hundred days of this new administration and try my own new administration.

Day One

On the first full day of the new administration, I wanted to get up early and get some work done. We had just returned from a monthlong writing retreat in Arizona. The house was a mess. I hadn’t been eating right during the retreat, and I wanted to make some healing nourishing food today. I also wanted to start the rewrite on my novel and do some library work.

I got up late. It was cold in the house. It was cold outside. Wind shook the house. I just wanted to crawl under a blanket and go back to sleep. Or go back to Arizona.

I moved slowly. I did the laundry. I did a little library work. Felt like I was walking through sludge. Felt like the bell jar of depression and immobility was dropping down over me again. I wondered if there was something about this house. Had I created a kind of morphic field of fear, anxiety and depression? The woman who owns this house developed problems with her brain while she lived here and her husband died at a relatively young age from cancer. But it took us years to find this house to rent. We live in an area where rich people can buy houses, but ordinary people can’t find affordable housing. Sometimes I think I made all the wrong choices when I was young. I should have gone into some kind of career that would have given me some kind of stability.

Some kind of money.

Of course, twenty-nine years ago, it never occurred to me that I would actually fail to make a living as a writer. I was certain I was good enough and smart enough: I would be one of the lucky ones. Mario, too.

That didn't happen.

But that's another story.

This day, I kept wondering if I was going to fail once again. A goal of transformation in a hundred days? Hah! I had set many goals over the years, but lately I couldn’t seem to reach any of them any more. Last year at this time, after my mother died, I promised myself that I would live a life of joy and purpose. I immediately wrote two novels—which was a good start—but then I wasn’t able to sell them. I became estranged from my agent after years of a great relationship. I began eating too much. And I couldn’t seem to pull myself out of a debilitating melancholy despite help from my naturopath, acupuncturist, therapist, and others.

So what made me think this artificial construct of a hundred days would accomplish anything?

I lay on the couch most of the day and watched any coverage I could find of President Obama. I had said for years that the government cannot do everything for its citizens. It's "we the people" not "I, the government." We each have got to be part of our communities. We have to be involved. We have to volunteer.

Most of what I do every day is unpaid work. Sometimes this is because I volunteer my time and talent; sometimes this is just the way it is. I don’t intend to stop doing that, but I am glad now that our president is encouraging the rest of the country to get involved. But this day, I didn’t feel like being involved in anything.

Mario came home for lunch. After he ate, we decided to take a walk. I don’t like walking in cold weather because the cold triggers my asthma. (Maybe I shouldn’t call it “my” asthma. Perhaps I’ll start calling it “the” asthma. I don’t want to claim it as my own!) But I thought, “Man, I can’t hide out in this house for another month.” So I pulled snow pants and a shirt over my pajamas and put on my long winter coat. I put on a hat and wrapped a scarf around my head and face. Mario went outside to talk to the man working to repair our roof. (While we were away, one of the many storms pulled part of our roof away.)

I noticed Mario’s keys on the steps. He had left them with me because the woman who watered our plants while we were gone still had my keys. Before Mario pulled the keys out of his pocket, I said, “Everyone in town has keys to our house except me.“ That was a slight exaggeration. I had given keys to two young people we knew whose parents had died. Anyway, I joked about other people having keys to our house. So Mario dropped his keys on the stairs.

I noticed the keys and yet I stepped outside and closed the door behind me. As soon as the door shut, I realized what I had done. I patted my pocket. At least I had an inhaler in my pocket. I swore. I realized a stranger was working on our roof and I probably should watch what I was saying. But I swore again.

Mario and I walked to the library and called the woman who had my keys. Her husband came to the library a few minutes later with the keys. He drove me home. The roofer was still there. He looked a little nervous as I walked up the steps. I wondered if I had frightened him.

Once I got inside, I lay on the couch again. This time I watched Top Chef. We ordinarily don’t have television service, but I had turned it back on for the inauguration. I had called earlier in the day to cancel it, but it was still on. So I watched it.

I started to feel as though my first day was a complete failure. President Obama had signed an executive order about ethics in his administration. I don’t like executive orders. They seem too much like something kings and queens do. I believe in the co-equal branches of government. Since Reagan, the president has become more and more powerful. This has happened back and forth during the history of our country. Some people seem to long for a king, a czar, one ruler, while the rest of us say, “Hey! Grow up. Be your own leader. We fought a revolution to get rid of the monarchy in this country.”

I don’t like executive orders, but I’m glad that they’re taking some steps to bring ethics back into government.

I emailed Mario about going into Portland for dinner. We had decided we would start tightening our belts once we got home from the retreat. Not sure how that will go. For one thing, I don’t have a belt. For another thing, we are not exactly spendthrifts. We don’t make much money, so we need to watch most of our pennies all the time. And, it was time to get back into the rhythm of our ordinary life: It was not time to run into Portland for more fun, frolicking, and food.

Or maybe it was.

The idea of going to town spurred me into action. I got up off the couch. I folded laundry. I did the dishes. I took all the stuff that was cluttering the kitchen table and put it away. (At least I think I put it away. Maybe I just put it into the back room where I could deal with it later.)

When Mario got home, I went out into the cold and the dark, and we drove to Portland.

As we headed for town, Mario asked me if the roofer was still around. I told him that he must have left at some point. In passing, Mario mentioned that the roofer had some peculiar religious views. Something about a kind of code in the bible which says that the United States is the salvation of the world.

“This person knows where I live?”

“It’s a small town,” Mario said. “Everyone knows where we live.”

“Does he have mental problems?” I asked.

I was starting to get nervous. When I was in high school, a girl I knew was murdered by someone she knew who apparently suddenly went crazy or who was off his meds. Or something terrible. I found out about it the night it happened while I was watching the 11:00 news at a house where I was babysitting. I heard Bill Bonds mispronounce the name of my classmate, heard him describe the knife and how many times it had been used. Heard that she had driven home after she was attacked and died in the arms of her sister. Or mother.

I remember I couldn’t scream because I didn’t want to wake the kids. I was sixteen years old. The room spun. I ran around the downstairs, mumbling, “No, no, no.” I finally called my father and he came and sat with me until the parents came home.

It was horrible.

Crazy people make me uneasy.

To put it mildly.

“No, he doesn’t have mental problems,” Mario said. “As far as I can tell. He’s looked at evidence and he's come to what he believes is a logical conclusion.”

“So he isn’t crazy?” I said. It was the dawn of a new day. Or at least the first hundred days. I needed to stop living in so much fear. “Maybe it’s like how I talk to fairies and trees. I suppose some people would think that was crazy.”

We ate at the Tao of Tea. A new waitress. She didn’t seem thrilled with her work or us. This was strange because usually the people at Tao of Tea are so wonderful. I ate dal and rice; Mario had chana chaval. $12. Afterward we went to Powell’s. We wandered around the store for awhile and then we ran out to the parking lot.

“Isn’t this so much fun?” I asked.

“It is indeed,” Mario said. We were laughing as we got into the car. I felt happy.

Mario couldn’t see very well to pull out of the parking spot, so I offered to get out and see how he was doing. I said it was clear and then I saw two pedestrians, so I said, “It’s clear except for the people coming.”

I should have said, “Stop!”

He kept going. I was standing in the open door so as the car went back, the door started to knock me over. I yelled for Mario to stop. When we were in Arizona, I had read a news story about a woman who had accidentally killed herself at a drive-up ATM when she leaned over to pick up something she had dropped on the ground. Her car lurched forward and crushed her.

As Mario kept going and I kept yelling, I flashed on this poor woman.

Mario did stop. The two women went by. I got back into the car.

And Mario and I had a terrible fight. Terrible for us. It’s all relative. Mostly I was yelling. Mostly I was scared shitless. Mostly Mario wasn’t saying a word.

I walked around Whole Foods by myself to blow off steam. I had to stop being afraid of what might happen or what could happen or what almost happened. Years ago, a therapist had said I reacted to the world and everyday events the way she had seen children who had been in wars react to the world. This was before they began diagnosing civilians with post-traumatic stress. Years later, another therapist said I had post-traumatic stress disorder.

I’m thinking I don’t have PTSD, but I do have an anxiety-provoking way of perceiving the world when I am under stress.

It ain’t easy being green.

Or being me.

Talk about crazy.

So far this first day was going just grand.

I stopped at the library annex on the way home and did some work. Then we stopped at another Whole Foods and got treats. Probably just a way to stuff all these anxieties back down and away. Hidden from all.

On the way home, we learned that Obama had retaken the oath of office.

“Oh good,” I said to Mario. “A do-over. I could use it.”

I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. I lay on the couch watching Top Chef and looking at a book on Haciendas.

Finally I went to bed.

This first day I was a vegetable. Perhaps on the second day I will be a fruit.

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