THE CULTURE OF LOVE

suicide isn't that easy

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 10:42:00 +0000

I have made several attempts. Drugs are not a guaranteed way out. I have spent countless hours surfing the internet to learn about suicide by massive insulin overdoses. And coumadin seems lilke it should be deadly.

I don't want to be alive. This is not about Trump, although the threats he poses to my tiny patch of survival is stressful. This is about my only child abandoning me. I can't have any value if I have no value to her. I gave her the very best I had in me. I made great sacrifices for her so she could be strong and have a great life, which I believe she does.

I just never, ever, imagined she could be happy while shunning me and lying about me to her life, telling people I a severely mentally ill. I have no mental illness -- one thing having shrinks is useful to have. I can prove no professional thinks I have a mental illness.

I don't want to wake up. I do't want to think. I am too sick to make friends and I can't stand being alone all the time anymore.

so this upset me

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 18:45:00 +0000

Within the past day or two, I could not remember my phone number. Not. At. All. It was so weird and also frightening. Alzheimer's setting in or stress unbalancing me?

this is my superpower

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 08:47:00 +0000

a world free of cockroaches

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 08:28:00 +0000

Growing up in a very white world on Chicago's South Side, and the South Side was very likely mostly black but I lived in an island of white. the North Side was nearly all white and South Side looked down on by North Siders. But I grew up in a white world. Now in my personal family, we were strictly forbidden to use the 'n' word, to denigrate blacks but I hung out in the homes of friends and steadily heard otherwise decent white adults speak casually and very racistly. I was shocked to hear adults I knew and liked speak about blacks as they did but I also, instinctively, never mentioned it -- not to my parents, fearful they would forbid me to go to such homes and not to my friends, not wanting to lose their friendships.

Then as I became an adult, I still occasionally, but less so because I have always hung out with very liberal humans, heard private conversations with whites that casually spoke of blacks with the 'n' word. I didn't always but I eventually learned to ask people not to talk to me as they did, not to voice racism to me. I did shake lose some 'friends'. I'm not sure when I crossed the line, when no one in my world ever used racist language in my hearing but I did cross that line.

I have never believed, however, that racism was over, just that I no longer heard it. I have always believed pockets of white people, especially those who didn't go to college or are just not very intelligent, have maintained their racist views. Believing such views had, somehow, evaporated, is like believing the world can be rid of cockroaches.

My ex-husband, not a particularly nice guy and, but I was so naive when I married him that I didn't see this in him, a Republican. Geez, I had grown so accustomed to assuming 'everyone I knew' was liberal that I married a red=neck from very red NE. This guy has served on the state'

listen

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 03:05:00 +0000

There is a voice
that doesn't use words.
Listen.
~ Rumi

orphan, widow. . no word for me

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 22:50:00 +0000

I only did a superficial google search but there is no single word in English to refer to a parent who has lost a child. I think there should be such a word and maybe another word for a parent who has lost a child through rejection.

The world tends to have empathy for children abandoned by parents but I would like some acknowledgment of my ongoing loss.

A person who loses a spouse to death is a widow or widower.

Now I see that we do not have any empathic word to refer to someone who has lost a love mate. Saying I am divorced fits my divorce but it does not acknowledge what I consider a more grievous loss, which is the lsos of someone I considered my life mate (he never did but I thought we'd be friends forever, I always expect friendships to last forever and I am always bruised, often listing, when a friendship ends, esp. when it ends abruptly with no closure.

I am very unhappy, lonely, alone. There is a deep, wide gulf between me and others. Oh, I know many kind people but no one that thinks to include me, for example, in their Thanksgiving dinner. No Elijah in my culture.

in the darkness glimmering

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 15:31:00 +0000

The Well of Grief
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.

David Whyte, from his book Risking Everything

hope, that thing with feathers

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 11:26:00 +0000

Pandora's box is in my thoughts. To punish Prometheus for taking fire from the gods and giving it to humans, he presented Pandora, a woman he had put together by other gods and goddess with special characteristics, to Prometheus' brother to be his wife. The brother accepted because she was so beautiful (so enticing?). She came with a kind of dowry, Pandora's Box, or a pithos, sometimes used as a storage urn or a burial urn. Pandora was sternly warned to never open her box for it contained everything bad that could happen but she could not resist. She opened it and as she saw one form of suffering after another fly out of her box, she struggled to close it.

She was only able to finally close her box with hope left inside. So Pandora let lose all manner of human suffering and kept hope boxed into her box.

So. Who might be the Pandora in our election? I admit that I have thought, several times, that Trump opened a Pandora's box of hate, greed, racism, xenophobia, etc. And I have thought Trump would be happy to withhold hope, esp. if it garnered him more attention, more adoration, which is what he seems to live for.

But could Hillary have been our Pandora? Did her unquenchable thirst for the power and all the money she and Bill have 'made' through their charity, book sales, speaking fees, etc. drive her to open her own Pandora's box filled with greed, ambition, warlust, a lack of integrity (all these would also, imho, apply to Trump -- I don't let him off!). Did she open a Pandora's box of human suffering because she could not quench her lifelong thirst to be queen, err, president? And did she, by her choices, box in hope. Or leave hope out of the mix?

To Trump supporters I remind of the old saying to be careful what you wished for. I very sincerely do not believe Trump is going to take care of the middle class, esp. if he endorses paul Ryan's lust to privatize Social Security and Medicare. I don't believe offshored jobs can be brought back and even if they could be, the poeple with those jobs in other countries need them.

One thing America needs to let go of (or leave in that box?!) is the idea that we are more special than other humans on this planet, that we have a right to a higher and unsustainable standard of living, above what humans in Ethiopia or Cambodia deserve. We all need to let go of our wholly irrational belief that we are exceptional, and that preserving white supremacy is irrational.

Yes, white middle class workers, it is hard to enter a human future in which whites are not the majority. Resubjugating nonwhites through new Jim-Crow-like rules is not the path forward.

Kindness if the path forward. ove is the way forward. Sharing and caring for one another, all others all over the globe, is the way forward. A mortgage on a condo in Georgia is not more important than feeding children in Namibia. Truly that mortgage is not more important.

For those in this country who are religious, and I include all spiritual practices, you know that it is not okay for some to suffer while others enjoy needless luxury, that some go hungry while others gorge. Turn the other cheek. That which you do to others is how you treat your God, or Her Son. Etc. Etc.

Our world in stupor lies: Auden

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 08:51:00 +0000

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Trees- Nat Shilkret Orchestra

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 17:27:00 +0000

I identify increasingly with trees, although I definitely do not match up to the fine standards of being a tree in nature. I am a work in progress.

let wendell berry sooth you

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 06:41:00 +0000

wild woman in Irish myth: my people, me!

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 22:03:00 +0000

Grief and anger as a stimulus for transformationThis is a post from Dr. Sharon Blackie's blog. She is a mythologist, psychologist and writer.
https://theartofenchantment.net/2016/11/10/the-wild-woman-in-irish-myth/

It seems that everyone knows about the wild men in Celtic mythology. The enigmatic Brittonic figure of Lailoken, who almost certainly, somewhere along the line, became conflated with Merlin, leading to the legend of Myrddin Wyllt, the wild man of the woods. Suibhne Geilt, Mad Sweeney from the old Irish tale Buile Shuibhne (‘The Frenzy of Sweeney’): the subject of a fine body of poetry which extends from Yeats to Heaney. It’s a story we seem to have seen before: everybody knows about the men, but somehow, nobody focuses on the women.

So let’s take a look at Mis, the most colourful and original wild woman of Irish mythology. (There are no great poems about Mis, but I’d like to think there will be, some day.) Mis was the daughter of Dáire Dóidgheal, a powerful ruler from Europe who set out to invade Ireland. He landed with a huge army in Ventry, County Kerry, and a fierce battle followed which lasted a year and a day. Dáire was eventually slain by the hero-warrior Fionn mac Cumaill, which ended the battle. Mis came down in the aftermath to look for her father, and found only his dead body, bleeding, on the beach. Mis was overwhelmed by grief, and flung herself across her father’s body, licking and sucking at his bloody wounds to try to heal them, just as an animal might. When this failed to restore him to life, madness overcame her and she rose up into the air like a bird and flew away into the heart of the Sliabh Mis mountains.

Mis lived in the mountains for many years, and grew long trailing fur and feathers to cover her naked skin. She grew great sharp claws with which she attacked and tore to pieces any creature or person she met. She could run like the wind, and no living thing was safe from her. They thought her so dangerous that the people of Kerry created a desert stripped of people and cattle between themselves and the mountains, just for fear of her.

The king in those parts, Feidlimid Mac Crimthainn, offered a reward to anyone who would capture Mis alive. No-one accepted, for fear of Mis, except for a gentle harper by the name of Dubh Ruis. Dubh Ruis enticed Mis out of hiding, and made love to her. He coaxed her into a pool and, over a period of days, washed away the dirt and scrubbed away her feathers and fur. He combed her hair, and fed her, and made a bed for her. And eventually, he brought her back to civilisation, and married her.

This is some of what I wrote about Mis in If Women Rose Rooted:

Sometimes, madness seems like the only possible response to the insanity of the civilised world; sometimes, holding ourselves together is not an option, and the only way forwards is to allow ourselves to fall apart. As the story of Mis shows, that madness can represent an extreme form of initiation, a trigger for profound transformation.

… Mis is the original wild woman, that archetypal madwoman who lives deep within each of us. She speaks for us all: for the rage which we cannot express, for the grief which eats our heart out, for the voices we have suppressed out of fear. This old story shows us a brutal descent into darkness during which all illusions are stripped away and old belief systems evaporate, and in doing so it suggests that the extremities of madness or mental breakdown, with their prolonged, out-of-control descent into the unknown, might offer us a path through which we can come to terms with the truth. Like other legendary geilta (the Irish word for madwomen) Mis is driven to extremity in her grief, shape-shifting into bird form, flying away into the hills and woods, growing fur and feathers, eating wild and raw food, leaving the intolerable world behind her. But a geilt cannot emerge from her madness and come back to the world until she has achieved some kind of personal transformation. Through her ordeal – her removal from society and her time spent in the wilderness – she must find a way to reclaim a more authentic sense of identity and belonging. She finds it with the help of a man; she finds it in the union of the masculine and feminine.

So, there we have her: Mis. The furious feminine, all fierce hag energy, wailing her grief into the mountains. A necessary fury, a transformative fury.

I love the story of Mis; I believe it contains a necessary lesson for women in these times. Sometimes, anger and grief is a necessary precursor to transformation. Sometimes, we need to let the wild woman rage. To grow feathers and fur, and run wild through the woods. Sometimes, we need to bite. To stop being nice and talking about love and light and thinking that we can make the world a better place just by pretending that it’s so, or that we can make Donald Trump a better man by sending him love and light through the ether. (Yes, I’ve seen that proposed as a solution to yesterday’s catastrophe by women I’d expect to know better. It beggars belief.) These are dark days in our history, and dark days for women. If women want to change that, we need to take hold of that pure, honest energy which fuels our necessary rage and grief, and use it next for transformation. Find the hag energy. Use it. Transmute it; transform it. It’s what all good alchemists do, and women are born alchemists.

What I particularly like about the story of Mis is that her transformation comes from bringing together both male and female energies. Dubh Ruis is a gentle man; he literally loves her back to life. Like Mis, women can’t do this work alone. Fortunately, there are still good men out there, and I believe that between us, we can do the great work of turning the base metal of a decadent and decaying culture into gold.

men and me, mostly me

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 13:28:00 +0000

I've been single, for all intents, since Feb 1984 when I left my long-ago and, so far, only husband. I lived with our daughter until 1998 when she started college early at age sixteen. She has shunned me since she was 19 and we haven't lived together, except when she had to leave campus because it was closed, for a few school holidays.

So I've been single in terms of being the adult managing my household since 1984. I have a tool box and tools. I have painted, hung wall paper, gardened, mowed lawns, done laundry, budgeted, indulged the daughter. And I never had to consult anyone about anything. One does not consult a child for adult choices, but I did consult my daughter some when a decision affected her, like 'did she want to go to Girl Scout camp?"

I got to thinking about how I've been single, basically living alone with no family or life partner, since 1984 when I visited two friends that married a few weeks after my visit. And what got me thinking about being single might surprise my girlfriend.

When there were chores to do around the house, she asked him to do them. She did not even get involved in deciding what might have needed to be done. She handed the manly tasks over to the man. This was not a big deal. She asked him to get a board so the guest bed I was sleeping on would stop sliding around, actually dumping me out of bed one night. It was an odd sleep set up and the board solved the issue.

They have new parquet flooring and their property manager has warned them to keep floor protectors on things like the feet of wooden chairs. The original floor protectors on their dining chairs fell off and he, the man, was assumed to have that job.

Watching him hammer the floor protector foot onto each leg of each chair tormented me because he was using a too-light hammer, so the nails were bending. A too-light hammer does not readily slide nails into solid hardwood, this these chairs were. I was itching to lend him my much better, heavier, strong hammer that was back in Berkeley. I did ask him if he had a heavier hammer. I did not say, and it was effort not to, that he was also swinging the hammer all wrong. He should not tap tap tap incrementally. He should use the strength in his arm by taking long swings with his hammer so the heft of the swing would move the nail, not that tap tap tapping that bent many nails.

He shrugged and said it was the only hammer he had.

The matter of not owning a few decent tools amazes me. I've had some basic, decent tools since I got my first apartment for law school, age 23. During my marriage, when we owned a house and I did a lot of home improvement projects -- me, not the guy, my husband never lifted a finger on any of my home improvement projects, although he took to 'joking' that in addition to a wife he had gotten a contractor.

I guess I got the home repair competency from my mom, for I don't recall my dad ever doing any household chores involving tools, while I do remember my mom installing cabinetry and hanging dry wall.

When I saw how my friend took it for granted that her man would do virtually any household chores other than some cooking, which she sometimes did, I realized I've never had a man around the house that did manly chores. Not my ex and I've never lived with anyone else.

I had a male friend when I first moved to CA who once promised to install a water filter on my kitchen faucet. He never did it. I thought to bring it up but I took offense that he didn't. The filter sits buried in a cabinet, uninstalled. And the worst part, for me, is knowing I could do it easily, probably with more ease than that guy could have done it. I guess I had this moment of weakness when I thought "hush my mouth, a man can do something for me".

I very much want to flip over my queen size futon but I can't do it alone and I don't know any one large enough to feel like asking. Like a man.

When I noted my friend's expectation, not just acceptance, that her man would do all household chores, I realized she and I inhabit different realities. Am I without a life partner because I don't flutter my eyes and get men to do things for me? Have I been alone so long that I can't let go and depend on another person? maybe. Maybe.

But the board, to fix the guest bed, was my idea and the one the guy bought worked but it should have been a few inches longer. He saw that as soon as he laid it down. I saw it as he measured but it was his house, his guest bed, his assigned chore. I said nothing.

I don't make a very good girl, never have been all dependent on men. And sex. I need to be wooed to be sexual. Seduced and romanced. I can't do the seducing, can't do much romancing although I do what I can. I wonder if my shyness comes across as disinterest.

Live in the mystery

I blame HER

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 05:14:00 +0000

I blame Hillary Clinton for the unfolding nightmare of Trump, it appears, winning.

I also believe all the cheating done during the primaries were clever practice runs, dress rehearsals, to steal this election. I believe OH and Florida were stolen by voter suppression, racist voter suppression, computer machine shit -- WTF did OH get machines that had the ability to take digital pictures of every ballot and then turn off that feature? So OH could hand OH to Donnie.

This explains Donnie's peculiar answers in the debate when he said he wouldn't promise to accept election results until he saw them. He knew he had it in the bag.

And WTF with Comey? Let's not forget that Obama appointed that clearly partisan Republican to be FBI director, a guy with no experience in the FBI and overt bias in favor of Repugs? And that stunt Comey pulled recently, re opening his so-called investigation of HIllary just when her poll numbers were taking off and, big surprise, they plummeted with 'comey's October surprise.

Cheating everywhere.

I did not vote for Trump or Hillary. And Trump has not won CA, so I rest easy that I voted for Stein.

But Trump as the most powerful leader in the world? I saw a headline for Paul Krugman's column. I have always liked his columns but I stopped reading him when he lined up early for Hillary and openly derided Bernie. I suppose I'll read the column whose headline I just saw, something about the US being a failed state.

But if we are a failed state, there is no winning state to come save us with regime change.

Trump is the winner. I know exactly what Edvard Munch sought to convey in his Scream paintings, for a part of me is screaming silently right now, and will be all night. Tomorrow morning I will wake up assuring myself this nightmare was just a nightmare and then I'll check the news and it will still be true: Trump.

is it all over now, baby blue?

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 04:41:00 +0000

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" by Nobel laureate Bob Dylan

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
Your empty handed armies, are all going home
Your lover who just walked out the door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start a new
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

wow, whodathunkit?

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 03:09:00 +0000

I never believed Trump would be giving Clinton such a run for the money. What's the matter with Florida? Is it like 2000, when a Republican-run state stole Florida for Georgie W.?

And Ohio, what's wrong with OHIO?! Then again, my brother Chuck the fuck is a retired OH judge and a lifelong very red conservative.

In his early years in practice, which were also my early years in practice but far away from one another, I once asked him, on a visit to see my mother so I had to see him cause he lived in her small town, how he could always support causes that favored the rich when he was not a rich man. He said, and I wish I were making this up, that he was not destined to be in the servant class, that he was a member of the elite. I didn't say anything but, geez, our dad had a blue collar, civil service job with city of chicago. Yeah, our mom became a school teacher, after Chuck left home for college. We grew up blue collar leaning into pink and white collars.

You have to understand that this is the brother who gave his 8th grade speech on the person he most admired in history on Adolf Hitler. He proudly paced the house rehearsing his speech and he frequently paused to remind us that the Irish were part of the Aryan race and Hitler never would have killed us. I didn't know much about Hitler but I vaguely understood he had killed millions. It was no comfort to me that Hitler might have spared my blood lines.

And where were our parents? That Hitler speech caused an uproar in our Catholic parish community. All the kids at school went to church, everyone's parents knew one another. When my mom got wind that people were scandalized that Chuck had given his big-deal 8th grade speech, a rite of passage for all 8th graders each year, she said "If I had known, I would have stopped him."

Bah! My parents never stopped Chuck from doing any of the endlessly nasty things he did. And mom could not honestly say she had no idea he was talking about Hitler because he talked about his Hitler speech constantly, over dinner table, in the evenings when the rest of us wanted to zone out with television.

Hitler.

Chuck only owns a house because our mother gave him one. And then he had the balls to ask her to pay for some home improvements after she not only gave him a house but first built him a two-story, four-car garage. The garage 'basement' was around bank, down the sloping property and mom had mostly put it in for the riding lawn mower. The garage, almost 30 years ago, cost over $30K but he still asked her to bay to convert their living and dining windows to bay windows to draw in more light. It was a dark house. They could have just painted the dark wooden paneling that covered all of the main rooms of the house. I think mom paid for the Bay windows but then declined to pay for his next home improvement.

Chuck the fuck. I bet he's pacing up and down tonight, snorting like a pent up race horse, over Trump's win in Ohio. How could my blood kin, my brother, be a Republican? Our mom was red too, Republican red. Chuck infected her.

Trump is creaming Hillary in OH but nobody trusts OH voting.

seek awakening within ourselves

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 13:17:00 +0000

we all know the answer to homelessness, war, lack

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 03:11:00 +0000

The answer to homelessness is the same answer to the Dakota Access pipeline and the same answer to meddling in other countries to benefit corporate profits.

The homeless are victims of late-stage capitalism and capitalism should be paying to help them. In a way, siccing BPD on our homeless is not very different from that creepy sheriff's office in ND siccing docs and militarized cops with tear gas, rubber bullets and unjust arrests. It is as if 'the system' thinks they can get rid of the homeless the way an apartment building might get rid of cockroaches. I am reminded of a favorite paragraph from Rainer Maria Rilke's "letter to a young poet".

"How could we forget those ancient myths… the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."

– Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

As a society, I am certain we would find the dragons of the homeless transformed into princesses and all of us transformed into princesses and princes. If we allow ourselves to be only a loving society, then we will have an only loving society.

the mastery, the work, of love

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 20:34:00 +0000

The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry — and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.

~ Erich Fromm

loneliness may spark delusion of love

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 18:51:00 +0000

Eric Fromm considers the peril of mistaking the spark for the substance:
If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.

suffering

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 18:46:00 +0000

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. ~ Oscar Wilde

my heart wearing out

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 04:44:00 +0000

My heart is wearing out
not the physical heart
that pumps my blood
that circulates my life force
through my veins
The heart that loves
and longs to be loved back
is wearing out

When I walk
sometimes
I feel my heart wearing out
Not palpitations
not pain like a heart attack

it is weary my heart
and my heart is big
and wide
and generous
and kind
and loving

But the old girl is wearing out
I am too alone in this world
If I have support I don't see it
except from my writers' group
and I think that group
really likes my writing
and also really likes me
but four hours a week is not enough

do I have a greedy heart?
I don't think so
I want my daughter to love me
and to show me love

I read that in China
it is now a law
that adult children must regularly
spend time with parents over age sixty
or face legal penalties
maybe even prison

I guess being my friend
after taking everything I had to give
is too much for my daughter to give me
And I know, damn how I know,
that I should be so fucking over this
she left me so many years ago
but who keeps track

she is FB friends with her father
who demanded I aboart her
when we conceived her deliberately
He incested her when she was five
I left him, staying away until
it was too late to get an abortion
Returning to health insurance and housing
She's friends with the father who,
given that his orders had been obeyed,
would have terminated her life before it got started

but me? she has made up the fantasy
that I am severely mentally ill
when I have no mental illness

Funny, her dad tried to say I was mentally ill
and thus unfit to be her custodial parent
I learned then that having a psychologist
when one is accused of being mentally ill
is honey in the heart
money in the bank
sunlight on dewdrops
Having a professional expert witness
who knew my accuser as well as he knew me
testify
preach
aver
that not only was I not mentally ill
but I had endured intense emotional abuse
and unacceptable physical abuse
and it was sane for me to seek help
to recover from such wounds

Rosie. I never had a mental illness.
I was diagnosed as having one
but then I got the right help
it took too long
it cost me a lot more than it ever cost you
you got the magna cum laude from an Ivy
and I got this worn out heart
that feels so unloved
because the one person I have loved
unreservedly wholeheartedly and abundantly
does not love me

my heart is wearing out

art, quicker than light?

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 04:39:00 +0000

no love for me

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 04:30:00 +0000

I had no real notion of grief
when I lost my only child
It took years to find my grief
for years I was just shocked
over the loss
It had never occurred to me
that my only child would shun me
When she did, something in me
was ruptured, damaged
and I was already damaged
I was damaged by damaged aprents
I had been damaged by her father
Our marriage counselor said
he was the cruelest person
the doctor had ever met
in over 20 years of marriage counseling
Doctor said 'most people have a certain threshold'
a threshold of decency beneath which they will not sink
and as far as he, our doctor could tell, my husband had no such threshold

Did his daughter inherit his coldness?
Inherit the etheric of cutting off a sacred bond
with her mother?
Her father worships his mother
she's friends with him on facebook
in spite of what he did to her when she was five
Me? I gave her everything and more

I know what my mistake was
I cared more about her than about myself
I role modeled not caring about me to her
and she learned the lesson well

But my grief. . . .
Fifteen years and one would think
that I have made progress
have I?
No. There is no end to losing one's child
No moving on from such grief
The loss grows, the river widens
finding new tributaries in my being
to spread pain into crevices
I diid not know I had
until they burned with my grief
grief has altered me
forced me to see anew
but see what?
I see snowy screens
with no reception
I see black and darkness
I see no star hinting at wholeness
no hint of light
no love for me

my daughter

noreply@blogger.com (Tree Fitzpatrick) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 03:46:00 +0000

When my daughter was about fourteen, she announced that I should be prepared for her to marry a black guy. "Black men" she said, "Are just more attractive." She wasn't dating anyone, at least not as far as I knew. If she ever dated any black men, I never knew. I knew when she was dating chicks. I knew about boyfriends, the white ones. Since she left me, I know very little. A college alumni bulletin listed a boy named Michael as her fiance that she moved to Chicago with. Chicago is my home town. Ironic. But Michael fell off the globe, I don't know what happened. He did website development and I haven't seen anything he's done online in years. I think he died of a drug overdose but that is instinct and guessing. I know she dated one idiot heroin addict, although I don't know that she knew he was a heroin addict when she moved in with him. I am sure she knew when she got rid of him. And I know about him because he sent me his cell phone number and offered to tell me all the true stories about my daughter. I did not take up his offer for I sensed his stories would hurt me and hurt her if she knew he had shared them. As hungry as I was for news of her, I was not going to enable emotional abuse. So I left her a voice message at her office to tell her about his offer, so she'd know he was trying to hurt her behind her back. Does anyone reading this think that heroin addict was offering to share happy, joyful tales about Katie with me? And did she, for even a second, feel gratitude that I (1) did not take up his offer to hear 'all about her' and (2) that I alerted her to his behavior. well, if she dated other drug addicts, or has any drug or alcohol dependency history (which I don't know that she ever had, just saying if . . . ), did I score even one point for blocking his abusive offer and alerting her to his attempt to be hurtful? Does anyone reading think that heroin addict wrote to me with the intention of warming my heart about her with his stories? No one who would read me, at least who knows me and reads me, is that stupid. That was years ago.

When Katie did become friendly with a not-Caucasian kid, she never mentioned that new friend's race. I would only find out that her dance girlfriend was half Vietnamese when, on a twenty below zero MN night, upon learning that girl was taking several buses to her suburban home, with no parent able to give her a ride, so I insisted on giving her a ride. And how that girl tried to resist. I still don't have any idea what that was about. Was she ashamed of her home? She could have directed me to the wrong block and still gotten home warm and safe. Heck, maybe she did direct me to the wrong address.

And when Katie got to her first college, she had some friends of color. I'd hear about the kids for months before meeting them, for she lived at college and I lived at my home and only saw her for semester breaks or parent weekend or the mandatory closed-dorm times when she couldn't find anything else to do so she came to me. Under duress. Not hiding her disdaiin for me but happy to take my hairdryer, nail clipppers, money and unlimited free rides.

She had this one gal pal that, I admit, I had an off instinct about. I didn't know this girl soe whatever my instinct was about, my instinct came from signals Katie sent. Maybe Katie just sent signals that I wouldn't like her but, even after all these years, I think it was something else. That particular girl was a year ahead of Katie, also into theater and did a second-year theater piece for her AA degree. Katie was cast in it but never told me she was performing so I didn't see it. Only on the last day on campus, packing up, did I meet the gal. She was Asian. Big secret. And her thesis theater piece was sexy, Katie had been sexy in it.

Now my Katie played Madge in William Inge's Pulitzer Prize winning 'Picnic', won that prize the year I was born. Inge pretty much nailed the narrow roles available to most women in 1953 in that play and my Katie, even in her rail thin, anorexic body, was smoldering hot in the play. She played the Kim Novak role in the movie version. How can a rail thing anorexic who was about to spend a whole summer in treatment for her eating disorder convey a smoking hot bombshell? Acting!!! Man she was good. If her friend's thesis production for which she cast Katie was sexier than Madge, it must have involved skimpy clothing. Or, maybe, nudity.

Nudity would not have bothered me. Not in a college thing. earlier, in h.s., yeah, sure, it would have been a line I would have drawn but I don't think Katie ever grokked that once she left for college, although I missed her and, yes, indeedy, I assumed we'd remain in one another's lives forever as most parents and their children do, once she left home for college, I let go of making her the center of my life.

Heck, we even had a therapy session about it before she left for college. She told me she didn't want me to move, to be near her when she was at college. I explained that I was not moving for her but for me, that I would be living at least two hours away and the days of me making life choices based on what she wanted were over, that I was living for me.

My dear Katie. Apparently she sees me as some ind of sick, even deviant person for loving my adult child and longing to have a relationship with her as all my friends have with their children.

It's been fifteen years since she first shunned me. I lost about five years, maybe more, to such deep grief. I just didn't see losing my only child coming. And, once I lost her, I couldn't wrap my heart and mind around the loss. How I tormented myself. I tried to invent memories of sick, twisetd abuse. In my heartbreak, at times, I convinced myself I must have been very physically abusive and then blocked out the memories. But in Katie's wonderful school, where we both had many adult friends who knew us as a family, if she was abused, adults around us would have known and said something.

What did I do? One friend has suggested I loved her too much. I beat myself up with that for a while, too.