Public Enemy #1

Hi, my name is Rudiger and I am a complete and utter bastard. Any time my people want to go somewhere, I seize the opportunity to run out the door and hide in the neighbor's yard. The trick is to stay just out of reach, occasionally taunting them by rubbing up against the fence and sweetly meowing. Then you just sit back and watch their blood pressure rise. It is AWESOME. Indoor cat, my hairy black ass! You may take my life, but you'll never take my freedom!

When I'm not plotting my escape, I enjoy shedding, knocking things off the table and stealing people's warm seats any time they get up. Well, I'd better go now. I think someone's coming. More later. Power to the felines!

In the name of freedom,
Rudiger

Shosholoza

Shosholoza is a Zulu word meaning "go forward" or "make way for the next man". It is also the title of my new spine tingling, favorite, good mood inspiring song to listen to (specifically the Ladysmith Black Mambazo version featuring Lucky Dube, Bhekumuzi Luthuli, Hugh Masekela, Vusi Mahlasela, Nokukhanya, Phuzekhemisi, and Thandiswa, a too short sample of which can be heard here). Mambazo's version really is beautiful, onomatopoeically layering sounds so that the music really does sound like the train about which they're singing.

With spring and the new year (Powellhurstian calendar) coming soon, shosholoza seems a good word of the month, especially when the word of about 2/3 of the past year felt like it was uphill. The prospect of making room for the new becomes a very welcome one indeed. So, as the crocuses poke their heads up through the soil, preparing for spring, I too am looking forward to what this new year of my life will bring. I hope cake will be involved...

The Crappiest Haiku

The other night in my Companions class, we were asked to write a haiku about how grudges, desires and anxieties affect our spiritual growth. While I love to words, writing under pressure for public consumption gives my stomach a flurry of Mothra sized butterflies. Neurotic about just about anything I write, I have a whole set of anxieties reserved especially for poetry. Even haikus, which always seem to turn up as fun stabs at poetry for the unpoetic (which is unfair, because it's just as difficult to write a good haiku as any other form of poetry), make me anxious. Chalk it up to my super-sized need for approval.




So, when pressed to write, all I could come up with was:

Thinking up haikus
Fills me with anxiety
I do not love them

Once that concept had infiltrated my head, that was it. No more room at the inn. By the end of our short writing time, my mind was filled with haiku inspired resistance and my paper blank. So I was forced to scrawl my My Grudge Against Haikus haiku down on it, put it in the basket from which we were all going to select each others work to read aloud, and sit there looking squirrely until mine was up. It got a laugh, which appeased the approval need, but left me feeling a bit like a cheater in terms of authenticity.

When I got home I started thinking. My experience with the poem is actually emblematic of the blindness that seizes us any time we become too focused on any fear, idea, want or expectation. Fear of becoming the author of the crappiest haiku (note to self: title of the stirring, triumphant memoir I will write in my golden years - The Crappiest Haiku: The Martina of Powellhurst Story) left me unable to treat the question as much more than a joke. Jokes are safe. If people laugh, it's okay. They were supposed to.

It's a lot easier to go for the laugh, focus on our fears than it is to own up to the negative parts of our belief systems. Sometimes we focus so much on what we feel, believe, want etc. that we don't see all of the possibilities that are out there. So, my self-assigned homework for the week is to be more aware of the times when I succumb to tunnel vision and to make an authentic attempt at trying something I'm not good at. Maybe I will surprise myself. Either way, it will be more memoir fodder.

Just STOP

Growing up in an Air Force family, I have spent a lot of time on military bases. My father was a Vietnam vet and my early years were spent stationed in Germany. When I was a kid, we even lived next to the army barracks in Frankfurt where Elvis had been stationed (though that was years after he was there).

Even after my father retired, visits to our local base were a regular part of my childhood. We spent a lot time around military people. My father always said they were "a different breed of people". In a lot of ways, I think his friends in the military became a kind of surrogate, supportive family that he never had growing up at home.

My father is buried at Willamette National Cemetary. If he were still here to answer the question of what about his life made him most proud, he would say his military service. I also have no doubt that he would be appalled at not only at what we are doing in Iraq, but at the way our young men and women are being abandoned without adequate access to medical and psychological treatment when they finally do come home.

Countless books and movies have been made about the human costs of this ill conceived war. It is not among the prettier, nobler parts of our history as a nation. No doubt many more will be made. By now everyone should know that while Saddam Hussein was undesirable in his own special way, he had nothing to do with 9/11 and that he was (despite being many other horrific things) not a Muslim fundamentalist. Everyone should know that our government engaged in some sleight of hand where intelligence was concerned in the lead up to the war. Everyone should also be aware of the costs of the war, costs that go far beyond the billions of dollars that will have been spent on it by the time all is said, done and blown up.

One of the better illustrations of those costs that I've had the opportunity to see in recent weeks is the movie The Ground Truth, which I've linked below for ease of viewing. It's not easy film to watch, but I can highly recommend taking the time to do so. Then, if you're still fired up (and I hope you will be, because, really, how could you not be?), and in the Portland area, please consider attending the peace rally and march scheduled for March 18th at 1:30 p.m. in the South Park Blocks (yes, the South Park Blocks...the event has moved).

Who needs sleep?

Back around my last major bout of insomnia, I discoverd the Bare Naked Ladies' song Who Needs Sleep. The crazed tempo of the chorus resonated as the fluffy (albeit catchy) pop version of how insomnia feels - not very deep, recurring thoughts flitting through the mind like an insistent melody that just won't leave.

These days I'm also able to link insomnia to Kumbhakarna (of The British Library's The Sleeping Demon Kumbhakarna above). It's not so much because I am a Hindu demon about to go head to head with against a monkey army (even if that would be good material for one of my weirder dreams and also makes me wonder if any of the monkeys I've dreamt about were veterans), but because the picture captures for me the feeling of my mind being prodded with pitchforky thoughts that keep pestering away even when the rest of me wants so badly to just sleep.

If you would have asked me Sunday night, I would have said Kumbhakarna got a sweet deal being cursed to six months of sleep at a time. I know that it resulted in being poked awake by an alarm clock of pitchforks and what look in the picture to be giant spoons, but around 4 a.m. when I was still awake, I think it would have sounded like a fair trade.

It's funny the things that run through a person's head when she cannot sleep: mental to do lists, recordings of conversations, song lyrics (Freedom is coming - freedom, but apparently not sleep). The worst part is that feeling of "something's bothering me, but I can't quite pinpoint what it is, so I guess I'll just stay awake FOREVER (and ever, amen)." My past bout with depressive prairie insomnia (the worst kind of insomnia!) tells me there's nothing less sleep inducing than trying to will yourself to sleep. Sometimes it's better to just get up, but being up when you really are tired and know you have to get up in the morning is unpleasantly pressure filled.

Thankfully, this was just one night and my days of long-term insomnia are far behind. Because I'm on the precipice of pre-geezerdom, my internal clock is now totally off from my night of non-sleep. What happened to the days when I could be out all night, come home, take a shower, and go teach at class at 8 a.m.? I can only sighingly say that I don't now and fight the urge to yell at some kids that they should get off my lawn. On the up side that sort of thing is tiring and might guarantee better sleep tonight...

In Memoriam

On the heels of coming home from my first rally planning committee meeting of the year, I learned that other activists were at work on their own event, when I read the headline Strippers in Smith Vigil. Apparently in honor of the death of a fellow former exotic dancer, the girls of Rick's Cabaret will don the traditional black mourning pasties and sheer black veils as they cease shaking their money makers to pay homage to Anna Nicole Smith. At the stroke of midnight, the lights will dim as they gather on stage to blow their fallen comrade a goodbye kiss. To add class to the event, the single source of light in the room will be a spotlit empty stripper pole. Dignity in life, dignity in death.

While it is tragic any time someone so young (especially someone leaving a small child behind) dies, the circus around this messed up human being's death is appalling. Whatever else she was, this woman was so obviously a colossally wounded, lost soul. While she chose to live out her struggles in the spotlight, it just seems wrong to turn a death into such a sensationalistic, gluttonous frenzy of infotainment.

It is amazing to me how many "news" segments have been devoted to speculation about everything from the events surrounding this woman's death to the paternity of her infant daughter to hard hitting investigations of why a TrimSpa spokeswoman would have Slimfast in her refrigerator. If only the media (and the public) would give the same attention to the war, healthcare, the corporatization of our government, and accountability for our political leaders. Speaking of which, I have to break from my thoughts for a moment to point out the irony of George Bush uttering the words "money trumps peace sometimes" during his press conference as I type.

If we want to conduct hard hitting investigations and hold someone accountable, now there would be a good place to start! And, so, I am off to hold my own mourning ceremony for a media that has for years failed to step up to the plate and do its real job. (No pasties or strippers poles will be involved...trust me, nobody wants to see that.)

Of specters, music and midnight blue

Last night was a night for another of my house dreams. This time I was driving along through the country on a sunny day. I passed a house (but not the house) with dozens of cats and kittens in the yard and thought to myself: "I want a kitten. I think I'll take one."


So, I slowly cruised by the fence at the edge of the yard, then proceeded to hang out there looking squirrelly. When the cats saw me, they all came running. The kittens, especially, were scaling the fence, eagerly hanging from it. It was then that I spotted the blue siamese kitten (a breed common only to dreams). It took me only a second to determine that he was the one for me. Alas, the owner of the house came out, probably wondering who was so clumsily staking out his place, so I drove on, thinking "I'll come back and steal that little blue one later."


Soon I found myself on a narrow road that wound through golden wheat fields, ending at a large, dilapidated Victorian. As I eased down the dirt road, I saw that one of the doors was open, so I parked and got out of the car (which was, by the way, my beloved real life blue Matrix). Even from outside, it was clear that the room it led to stood in stark contrast to the shabby outside of the house. It was well appointed - bright, clean, fresh wallpaper, lovely antique furniture.


A woman came out, calling to me to come inside. They had been waiting for me, she said. At first I thought she was some kind of real estate agent, but she turned out to be what is probably best described as a guide. She, of course, did not tell me this. In the way of dreams, I just knew.

As she showed me the room, I spotted a piano in the corner and rushed over, wanting to play it. As I got closer, however, it started playing a Clementi piece. I held back, wondering if it was an old player piano, watching the keys move up and down of their own accord.


The guide laughed and said, "Oh, don't worry about that. That's just the ghost, go ahead." The music stopped, so I moved forward to play myself. As I went to put my hands to the keys, I suddenly felt my arms paralysed at my sides, as though being held by invisible bonds. Call me skittish about being held captive by ghosts, but occurred to me that perhaps it would be best to leave. As if sensing my thoughts, the guide said (completely without malice and not at all creepily), "Don't leave yet. She likes you."


It was at that point that I decided it would perhaps be best to flee. While fleeing usually involves running (in the case of anything as gothic as a a Victorian and a ghost, usually in a billowing white nightgown, preferably at night, while armed with a candle), my flight involved walking out into the sun, arm in arm with the guide.

When we got outside, I noticed that there was a pond on the grounds. As I looked out over it, I saw a woman who reminded me very much of Clytie Jessop's Miss Jessel in The Innocents, but wearing a white gown, wading out into the water. For some reason, she carried a parasol as she did this. After a moment, she was gone. I looked down at the ground to see not only the shadows of the guide and myself, but also that of a third, invisible member of our party.


Realizing that the ghost had followed me outside, I decided (despite the continued protests of the guide) that it really was time to go. So, I got in the car (presumably to do some kitten stealing), and drove off, watching the guide and ghost shadow waving at me in my rearview mirror. I had not gotten too far, when it occurred to me that perhaps I had been too hasty in abandoning the house. I wondered if I shouldn't go back. Part of me really wanted to, but part of me was also a little afraid to.


Alas, I will never know what happened, because it was at that point that the real life Toby, impatient with the time it was taking me to wake up, stuck his wet nose in my face and began howling for his morning song (don't ask, it's a thing we have...)