Valerie's Beauty

Best of Times, Worst of Times

2009-03-16T09:15:00.003-04:00

I'm going to try to turn a pet peeve into beauty; let me know how well I do.

I get very annoyed whenever I hear (or read) about the "unprecedented" violence, unrest and precariousness we face "in the world today."

There is nothing "unprecedented" about it. Instead, there is a constant voice, in each age that cries out that we are on the brink of total disaster. (At least since people began writing down their ideas, about five thousand years ago. Maybe writing is the trouble...)

I do not deny that we face serious problems and danger, and that these take new forms than they did before. But, we survived the Ice Age, the Dark Ages, and at least the beginning of the Atomic Age. The unthinkable happened – events no one had thought to worry about – and here we are.

More than this, for the first time in recorded history, we have structures such as child labor laws, and domestic violence laws, and the UN – that often fail, yes, but that exist to protect the vulnerable, that we now take for granted, and that never existed before on such a scale.

Maybe there is a function in human perception that causes some to insist that we are on the brink of total unprecedented disaster.

Where are the voices that celebrate how we are evolving ever-more into peace-, justice- and kindness-loving creatures?

Here’s mine: we are so screwed up, we fail, and yet we keep creating beauty.

How’d I do?

Three Cups of Tea

2009-02-24T16:45:00.003-05:00

Have you heard about this book, or Greg Mortenson? Maybe what’s flicked across your radar is the story of a man who failed to climb K2, instead found, in a tiny village on the edge of its glacier, sustenance so deep and nourishing that he promised to build the people a school, for their children whose classroom was a teacherless hillside, math done with sticks in soft earth.

He has since built 78 schools for boys and girls across the rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. When he made his first promise, in 1993, he owned nothing – he lived in his car, worked as a nurse. He had no idea how to raise the $12,000 needed to build a school.

He had no political agenda – he simply built schools, and paid the teachers the people chose among themselves. Of the two fatwa’s issued against him, one was overruled by the Ayatollah’s of Iran themselves, the other by a local shariah court.

While the Taliban is once again energetically blowing up girls schools, Mortenson travels eight months a year here to raise funds and awareness, and four months a year in Pakistan and Afghanistan to check in on existing and future schools.

His vision is so powerful and effective, this book is now required reading for our State Department.

Read this book and let your notions of possible and impossible, and scarcity and abundance be thrown into a swirling, heady, welcome chaos.

My Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

2009-02-24T16:42:00.002-05:00

Imagine if you reorganize how your mind processes information, releasing painful triggers and keeping only happy ones. For good. This is what Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, got to do. Well yes, at age 37 she had to suffer a massive debilitating stroke from which she took eight years to recover for the privilege, but she did get to do this.

Sometimes a book comes along and so touches my life that it ever after informs the most intimate inner processes of my thinking and feeling. This book did that for me.

Consider this: when something triggers an emotion in us, a series of chemicals which we experience as fear, excitement, grief etc. goes through our blood stream in 90 seconds. Any experience we have of that emotion longer than 90 seconds is because we VOLUNTARILY keep thinking about whatever triggered us. We chose these thoughts. We can chose other thoughts.
But generally, we don’t – we mull and attach and prolong the feeling. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not, but it is always a choice. Knowing that is incredibly freeing.

This is just one tidbit from Taylor's story, which is amazing both in terms of how wisely and imaginatively she handled her recovery back from a pre-verbal state, and in terms of how she made use of the fresh start that had been forced upon her.

For anyone who’s tried to meditate and wondered what the heck they were doing, this is for you.

What if... joy?

2009-01-24T11:56:00.007-05:00

What if we were exactly perfect the way we are? What if we could all just groove on our innate perfection, delight in how much bad TV we watch, laugh at our inconsistent behavior, rejoice in the messes we make.

So much gets caught up in how we want to be seen by others and by ourselves, sometimes we don't savor an aspect of ourselves because our only relationship to it is trying to change it. I'm not against change. Not by a long shot. I see how certain habits of body or mind do not serve me and I work to eliminate/adapt /update/release them.

But what if we allowed for the idea that, along the way – no matter how fat, lazy, broke, dishonest, undisciplined we may be – we never cease to be magnificent. The movie Leaving Las Vegas was a sort of homage to that idea.

I believe that all our actions of body and mind can only serve to reveal the joy of our lives, or veil it. We cannot create joy, anymore than we can destroy it. We can only interfere with our experience of it – and even then, some of the ways we chose to block our own joy are downright beautiful in their absurdity, the way rust on iron can be a beautiful color.

What if .... joy?

Seven Pounds

2009-01-02T09:47:00.003-05:00

I just saw Will Smith's latest movie last night, Seven Pounds. Deeply affecting when I saw it, it haunted my dreams all night.

Without "spoiling" the plot or ending, I can tell you that the reviews I read missed the point completely. They say it is a strange and failed vehicle for a story about redemption, or forgiveness, or repentance. It is none of these things.

It is an incredibly beautiful character study of a man who is going down, unstoppably. Suffering from what I would call a terrible mental illness induced by a horrific trauma, he does not perceive any way or reason to stop his own descent, but he does see a way to harness its sheer energy and give it meaning, make it resonant and beautiful.

This is a tragedy, a man whose fatal flaw is that he ceases to perceive his own value, but his strength of character and beauty of soul are such that he strives to use his life to bring beauty and possibility around him.

A devastating storm has its beauty, and as one watches it one can only pray that one's home is never touched by it.

I was especially affected by the story as I have a cousin who suffered the same trauma, and, after careful, painful years of rebuilding his life, became a whole new person. In a sense that is what Will Smith's character strives to do. See this movie, and tell me if you think he achieved it.

Season's Greetings

2008-12-19T19:14:00.002-05:00

For Mary, and for You and Me too

long journey. darkness. silence. doors slamming shut.

you most exhausted with your massive weighty belly: no way out.

worn out, disgusted by the barn, unwashed animals,

not even a small bowl of clean water or the tiniest lamp.

each of us has been here, wondered, why me? wondered, why go on?

yet the waters break by themselves.

into the dark manger of our fears, our shame, our divine new life is born.

not without excruciating labor, but when the bright new babe is in our arms

pain and past are washed clean, washed away,

in the starlight of joy,

the brilliance of the eternal present,

the sparkling magic of Christmas.

Creativity

2008-11-30T12:16:00.003-05:00

Today I wish simply to share this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation.

And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight (even if they have made a mistake and embrace blindly), perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable.

This to me is the cycle of beauty. Were I to have a religion, this could be its credo. How thrilling to find it expressed so perfectly, over 100 years ago.

Loving Kindness

2008-11-20T17:28:00.003-05:00

Dinner with a friend recently spurred the following musing in my mind: what if no matter what do, we embody loving kindness?

Mostly, I’ve thought of the practice of loving kindness as an effort, a mindfulness, a way of regarding and treating people that is different from my normal reactive way. But assuming we are indeed divine creations, can any of our actions not be loving?

I’ve been spared so much by turning away from people who were mean. In a sense, they were guard dogs against danger. Every time I’ve been hurt or angered, I’ve also been spurred to move on to a truer place, impelled to find a job/lover/home/perspective where/with whom I could best become who I want to be, who I believe I was born to be.

I think of the Zen koan, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.’

What if loving kindness were not so much about altering how we behave or perceive others, and rather accept that there is nothing we can do that does not become fuel for our own or others’ eventual evolution and greater capacity for love and awareness? What if we all are (and all we are is) loving kindness, and our only task is to accept that?

Am I on to something here, or is it just another grease fire in the brain pan?

Does this make sense outside my head? Pray do tell.

This Moment

2008-11-03T13:02:00.006-05:00

Like many of you, I’m thrilled and anxious when considering the outcome of tomorrow’s election.

By some grace, though, a joyous, steadying thought keeps coming back: we made it this far. Through the campaign, through the last fifty years, last four hundred years.

The past two elections disappointed me deeply, not only for the resulting administration, but also for the alienation I then felt from the rest of the country.

Now I’m looking around, and I like what I see. While nothing is certain, one thing is clear: an African-American man has a very clear shot at becoming our 44th president, less than fifty years after young men and women of his skin shade had to protest for the right to vote (not to forget the open savage violence when they attempted to register).

Has this been pointed out enough? Can it be?

1963

2008

I like the new signs better, don’t you?

I’m not saying racism is over in this country. I just want to say I’m proud of us. I look across the ocean to France: the Algerian Revolution ended in 1962, and Arabs in France have made few real gains in status. Not to oversimplify, as that is a multi-dimensionally different situation, but look at us.

Just look at us.

I don’t know how I’ll feel on Wednesday; emotions are riding high. But right now, for the first time in a long time, I am proud to be American – not just a New Yorker!

p.s. it’s the economy stupid

2008-10-17T17:59:00.001-04:00

To clarify, the previous entry was in no way an attempt to prove that Obama is the better candidate. I know that economic policy choices will make an enormous difference in how the next administration affects our country. I also know that I don’t sufficiently understand our economy, or what it needs, to make a good determination along those lines. I am voting based on what I do know and understand.

That’s the idea: everyone is voting that way.

That’s my common ground with people whose politics appall me. Holding to that perspective keeps me from being so angry or anxious.

That’s what beauty does for me, and that’s what I’m doing here, trying to find the beauty.

Comments welcome, as always.

Love thy Republican as thy Self

2008-10-15T19:11:00.003-04:00

I’m dreading voting day. Or rather, the day after. Will there be that cataclysmic disappointment, that same wondering who-the-hell-are-my-fellow-Americans as there was back in ’04?

In anticipation, I’ve done some soul-searching.

In my life today, there are some very wonderful people who I know are going to vote republican. This does not change my affection for them. I’m disturbed by the faceless masses, the ones ‘out there,’ the alleged 36 or 48 or 52 percent of Americans who think McCain/Palin is the way to go.

Just as I may be disturbing them.

I’m voting for Obama because of his interest in civil rights, that is, for example, early childhood education, legal abortion, legislation for gays. I think the world is a better place when women can trust they are covered for the 1% their birth control fails, where children can read and count and where people are encouraged to love.

This may be as crazy as voting for someone because of gun control, or the life of an embryo, or fear of terrorism.

I’m voting for the leader who makes me feel more safe and more free than the other.
Isn’t that what we are all doing?

If I can keep that in heart and mind, maybe this time I will stay whole when we learn which way the country is divided. Neither too glum, nor too gleeful, as the case may be. Rather, ready to build bridges. To somewhere. (wink)

Clouds and diamonds

2008-08-12T11:23:00.005-04:00

Joy: Yesterday, I shared with my mother the awe-inspiring sight of overlapping mighty gray and bright white cumulus clouds, against shining blue sky. Yesterday my mother lifted her blue-green-gray eyes and gasped at the sky and put her hand to her mouth, something she hasn't done in months. Then we smiled at each other completely. All our love is in this.

How to explain what it is like to love someone when all context is gone? I love her because of the past, yes of course, but I love her too because of who she is in this moment. Almost more than ever, for disappointment and expecation and roles are gone.

Does she think me her daughter? Her mother? Does it matter? And who is she to me? No longer parent, certainly still family, somehow become native country. She is my native country. More than the country where I was born or the one where she was born.

I weep for missing her active daily presence in my life, but I weep more at the beauty of the grace of learning to love someone so purely, the grace of being loved with the shimmering, penetrating embrace of innocence and complete acceptance.

I wish you all this grace, though it tears life open, though it breaks one’s heart completely, for it is the crack in the earth which reveals all the diamonds.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

My Body is My Temple

2008-07-18T13:42:00.004-04:00

The first time I heard someone say, 'No, I won't eat [that], my body is my temple,' it was the 70s and I was about 10 years old. I was struck by the comment, but had no idea what it meant.

Now, I think I’m starting to get it. A temple is where we worship, where we go to find peace and solace, to seek the experience of God however we define that.

I have often gotten caught up, instead, in worshipping the temple.

But lately I’ve come to understand that when I think, My body is my temple, this is not vanity.

My body is my temple in so much as it needs to be a peaceful place through which I can experience the divine. To be peaceful that way, this body needs 9 hours sleep, meditation, good food, lots of walking etc., and also the company of friends, the joy and sorrow of love, the experience of wilderness and all forms of beauty, perceived and expressed.

Seeing myself this way changes the way I look at others too. When I really get into it, I no longer see young or old, slender or fat, distinctions that are all about status and worldly power, anyway.

When I really experience my body as a temple, I get to see everyone else’s body as a temple too. And then, well, I have a really nice day.

I hope you have a nice day too.

... and a chipmunk in a pear tree

2008-07-06T17:04:00.002-04:00

From outside my window, something sweet for you as the holiday weekend draws to a close.

come see the water fall

2008-06-28T11:29:00.006-04:00

There is a fairy goddess creature on the East River of Manhattan. She stands so tall, facing north, and you cannot really see her face. But if you approach her from the south, especially at night, you will see her ever-flowing white hair pouring off her shoulders. Or you might think someone had opened a zipper in the night sky and let the heavenly waters pour out.

I am not making this up. Well, maybe the part about the zipper and the fairy, but not the part about the water, and the 100 foot fall from the sky. If you don't believe me click here.

New York City has been graced with the work of Olafur Eliasson and his vision of four waterfalls around the East River and under the Brooklyn Bridge.

I love and cherish the interest of artists from around the world to grace my home town with their wild ideas, and I am so grateful that this city is a place for wild ideas to flourish and be realized.

Most of all, visiting the falls last night, especially as darkness set and rendered the scaffolding invisible, while the light on the falling water made them glow, I experienced a very adult and childlike sense of magic and wonder, one where my intellectual understanding of what I saw in no way interfered with the near mystical awe.

Thank you Olafur, thank you New York City, thank you Public Art Fund.

And you who read this, come and see for yourselves. The falls will be there through mid-October. And try to be good: resist the urge to climb the scaffolding and ride the cool white wave...

on a lighter note

2008-06-26T13:02:00.004-04:00

Paul and I went recently to MoMA. They've moved some paintings since I was last there; I missed seeing Klimt's Forest but delighted in the Pollack room where my eyes feasted a long while. (above, detail from "Full Fathom Five")

Is it odd or fitting that it was in this museum of visual art that I discovered how easily the world can be deprived of color?

One hallway, on the third floor I believe, was drenched in yellow light. All other colors vanished. I tried to remember how colors work... Ah yes, blue lets in all the colors except blue which it reflects back. So what if there is no blue in the light? In this case, everything -- faces, clothing, hands -- was in gray scale of yellow to black. No orange, red, pinks, purple, blue, green or white. It was awful.

If I were ever captured and jailed in some distopian future, that would possibly be the worse punishment. I did not know this was possible without prior injury to my eyes or somesuch.

It surely made me hunger for color immediately -- Paul and I raced through the long pool of yellow light to the other side of the corridor where colors returned.

I need all my colors. The deep purples and the soft greens and sunny oranges. They feed my eyes and my soul. Sometimes I envy the birds' and the bees' ability to see even more colors than I do. Not one color less will do, no, not even one less.

Yesterday's Post, last month's news

2008-06-18T09:59:00.003-04:00

I don't often read the newspaper, so I found out from some friends on Monday that the Bodies Exhibit has been forced by the NY Attorney General to post the following disclaimer at its NYC exhibit entrance and website:

Disclaimer: This exhibit displays human remains of Chinese citizens or residents which were originally received by the Chinese Bureau of Police. The Chinese Bureau of Police may receive bodies from Chinese prisons. Premier cannot independently verify that the human remains you are viewing are not those of persons who were incarcerated in Chinese prisons.

This exhibit displays full body cadavers as well as human body parts, organs, fetuses and embryos that come from cadavers of Chinese citizens or residents. With respect to the human parts, organs, fetuses and embryos you are viewing, Premier relies solely on the representations of its Chinese partners and cannot independently verify that they do not belong to persons executed while incarcerated in Chinese prisons.

Worse, yes it gets worse: in China, the families of executed prisoners, when they are even notified of the death at all, have a choice: pay for the room and board of the prisoner’s incarceration, including the bullet used for execution, or receive a large sum of money for the body parts.

I am horrified that people can know this and still pay almost $30 to see the exhibit. I am horrified that the exhibitors know this and still collect the money instead of immediately closing the shows, which are all over the world.

That is what yesterday's post is about. Like I said it is not pretty, but perhaps sometimes outrage can be a form a beauty? What do you think?

This one will not be pretty

2008-06-17T11:02:00.004-04:00

Six cents for the bullet to the back of the head

Of your man

Whom you have not seen in months

Who was taken from your bed in the middle of the night

For a crime that he may or may not have committed,

A crime that may or may not be a crime.

Six cents on top of the room and board

For which you will have to pay

The room being his tiny prison cell

The food being maggotty rice

A bill for things you never wanted.

A bill that is more than you can afford,

and already the children's bellies growl.

Ah! but they offer you a way out: let us sell his body for parts

Sell his body, he's dead now, what difference does it make.

Better yet, we'll pay for everything, we'll even give you money

Lots of money

and we won't even charge you the six cents.

This could be a great honor! He may go from

being a bad criminal to saving lives!

A kidney for a poor young mother whose children need her.

Who knows, he could become famous, yes famous in America!

Altantic City, Las Vegas, New York City.

World famous: Budapest, Madrid, Vienna

Smart people will move his body into a shape -- so clever!

Looks like he's playing soccer! Patty cakes!

Dancing a happy dance!

Good for science. Good for education.

Many people will pay big money to see him! More than you make in a week!

Many fancy people will line up to see him, without his skin, looking like he's playing soccer.

So clever.

So much better than you paying six cents for the bullet we put in his head.

Don't worry over him so much. Did you really like him so much?

How can you like an enemy of the state? What are your political affiliations?

Where were you last week at 9 p.m.?

Faith on a wing

2008-06-11T18:39:00.006-04:00

I found a dragonfly wing this morning. It caught the light just right on my path or I would never have seen it, transparent miracle that it is.

This photo (found online) doesn't show the wing's rainbow irridescence when tilted toward the sun. But it captures exactly the wing's awe-inspiring intricacy.

I am brought to think of a quote from the New Testament Gospels, Matt 6:28-30 28, "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"

For those of you who don't know me well, I could not be confused with a Christian, but I have faith -- sometimes large, sometimes little -- and I dip my bucket in many wells.

Sometimes I find a well in texts, scripture and otherwise. Sometimes I find one even deeper, in the impossibly fragile construct of a dragonfly wing.

Where do you dip your bucket?

random act...

2008-06-06T12:52:00.001-04:00

Age

2008-06-04T13:45:00.003-04:00

I have a reverse body image problem -- I think I look much younger and thinner than I actually do. This is okay -- it makes me happy, I walk down the street feeling good and then laugh at how different I look in a passing window than I think I do. I read somewhere that optimists tend to have a weaker grasp on reality than pessimists. But we also have more fun.

Lately, however, I occasionally notice changes in my body that even my most optimistic self cannot deny. The texture of my skin is changing, not just on my face, but on places like my legs, too. My first thought is displeasure. I have internalized the idea that this is bad, that skin should not look or feel like this.

Then I remember -- it's not just that I'm getting older: I get to get older. I have avoided death several times, even when it stared me in the face.

Getting older happens when we're lucky. And who says that my skin should look this way and not that? Surely not the man I live with, who prefers the way women look as they get older. (I didn't chose him for that, I swear, it's just a fringe benefit.)

Go see the movie The Visitor , just a gem, and fall in love with 48-year-old Hiam Abbass. We need more women like her who are not afraid of their own faces. Women who shine at any age.

Let me take you down, cause I'm going to...

2008-05-20T10:19:00.011-04:00

...Celery Fields, where everything is quite real.

In this 107-acre nature preserve, a young deer stares me down forty paces away. Watersnakes mate in slithering groups of two or three. Chipmunks and rabbits scurry hither and yon. Tiny bright yellow warblers cavort in the flowering trees and tall reeds among cardinals and red-winged blackbirds. A great blue heron glides along the surface of the central pond, its vast wings never touching the water inches below.

My best spot to meditate happens to be surrounded by lively green poison ivy. Daily I am tempted to bring clandestine clippers and do away with this possible eventual barrier to my sanctuary.

But there is one rule here. No interfering: no killing anything, no feeding anything. Nature, unimpeded, amidst clipped suburban lawns.

Thus, my meditation this morning: what metaphor to me, this poison ivy? Is it poisonous thoughts that plague my mind, of ‘not enough’ , ‘what if’ and ‘what ifn't’. The poisonous leaves do not harm me as long as I don’t touch them. If I don’t fondle the thoughts that inevitably grow where wild things live, where imagination runs wild and free, I can dwell among the ravishing quiet and bird song, where death floats in the water creating a new scuplture of sky, inversing the laws of gravity, as I sit with earth and sky both above and below, as they truly are.

Welcome to the Celery Fields.

p.s. these photos are not mine, as I go there empty-handed. All photos taken at Celery Fields, except Ivy. In order, credits: animals from Phil Lombardi, ivy from Tim McDowell, last Kevin Watson. For more click here.

Web of Care

2008-04-28T12:15:00.003-04:00

I try to meditate every morning; I pray and then I listen. There's one prayer I've been doing lately that feels really good. I think I made it up -- I don't remember anyone teaching it to me.

It goes like this: I ask for a blessing for all the people about whom I care, all the people about whom they care, and all the people about whom they care, on and on until everyone in the whole world is included. Then I ask a blessing for all the people who care about me, and all the people who care about them, and on and on until the whole world is included that way.

I imagine for a moment the whole world connected by a web of care. I inhale all the care that comes toward me; I exhale all the care that goes out from me.

Each act of kindness we perform touches a life which touches another. That is another facet of the same idea.

How do you like this? Tell me if this works for you, or if something else does, or if you have your own variation.

Daisy

2008-04-22T11:29:00.006-04:00

I promised some time ago to tell you about Daisy, and after several heavy, serious posts I felt I could use some levity, how about you?

Daisy is my first dog. She was ten when we met two years ago. I never really ‘got’ dogs before. What an ambassador she has been.

She is so good as to be unreal. She is happy to go anywhere, do anything, and take a nap in between. Children can walk right up and grab her ears or stick their hands in her mouth, and she simply lies down to be petted. She will hike for two hours or nap all day.

She absolutely exudes complete peace and gentleness. She is never distressed or anxious.

Her only complaint seems to be if Paul should be downstairs in his studio when I’m upstairs writing. If she wakes from her nap, she may bark ‘woo woo! woo woo!’ until one of us comes and lets her out or sits and pets her. Never mind that she is perfectly capable of coming up to me or down to him. She wants us to be everybody all together, all the time.

Just sitting with her calms me, kissing her velvet nose and smelling her sunshine scent. Honestly, she smells like sunshine. Come on over and have a whiff.

The Eyes of Chamber Street

2008-04-15T11:55:00.008-04:00

Last week I used the Chambers Street/World Trade Center subway station for the first time since it was closed after the Twin Towers were destroyed.

I was struck by the mosaic eyes like the one above that are spaced out singly among the regular white subway tiles throughout the station.

Here's where my mind went:
Being underground, I felt as if these were the eyes of the dead of 9/11. Then I thought of the people who jumped out of the burning building, especially those who held hands.

I imagined the moment I cannot imagine. The people holding hands might not ever have even spoken before. It could have been the CEO and the office supply manager, or the woman who got the promotion and the man who was passed over, or the vocally pro-choice democrat and the quiet pro-life republican.

But with death behind and death in front, all that mattered was connection, shared humanity, shared frailty which combined to create a moment of strength and innocence that touched the world.

Then I thought, we are all on that ledge, with death behind and death in front. We pretend we are not, we pretend there is time for petty rivalry, indifference, even disdain. But being alive we are each of us standing on that burning ledge, a place that can only be cooled by the welcome of another's hand.

What are we waiting for to open ours?