Racism

I've been thinking about racism this primary season and how I grew up in it and in honestly still find the taints and stains of programed reaction in me.  I was born in 1938 in a small southern Indiana town which had a Sundowner law.  That is, the coloreds, as the "nice""  middle class people called them, couldn't be in the county after sundown.  I didn't know this at the time.  It wasn't spoken of in polite company which my mother was always sure we would keep.  When we moved to a small town in another county, my mother told me we would get to see colored people.   I suppose she did this to arouse my interest and curiosity and sell the move as I was leaving my best friend Janie and going into a new town and new school where I knew no one.  I have to say I was truly disappointed in the colored people as they looked like everyone else but with good suntans.  I was six.  

My father owned the five and dime store which sold everything from wallpaper to toys.  The black people came in the front door, I think.  It was late 1944 and the war was almost over.  I remember skipping down the street happy that Roosevelt had died.  My mother had told me that God had killed him because he wanted too much power.  

When I was about 8 or 9, they integrated the black school with our school.  My mother said some people said they weren't going to send their children to school because of that.  We were different.  We thought it was okay.  This was before the Warren court.  There were two girls whose names I still remember, Becky and Betty Jean.  By high school, we knew that one was very sweet and nice and one was angry.  We couldn't figure out why.  I had a friend who had Southern pretensions.  Her father had played in the Grand Ole Oprey and she took friends with her sometimes and was able to go back stage.  I,  because I didn't like that kind of music(again my mother),  I was never chosen for this treat.  She and the angry black girl got in a huge argument which Peg told us about.  Becky had said, "You hate me?  Well I tell you I hate you and all white people more than you could ever hate me!"  Peg was shaken and upset.  I was aghast and puzzled. All white people?   What was she so mad about? I wondered.  Didn't she get to go to school with us?  Weren't we nice?  I mean at least I was nice.  I always smiled and said hello.  A nice white person, not like some.

The colored lived literally across the railroad tracks.  One of the high school adventures was to go drive through the neighborhood at night.  I don't remember any vandalism or even any noise making.  It was thrilling though for reasons I couldn't then explain.  They were the others, dark, dangerous different.   And I'm sure we infuriated them by our intrusion.

It was in college that I began to let myself think the unthinkable.  Those were great moments of adventures of the mind.  Maybe there was no God.  I would imagine it and look at the world that way and see how it felt.    And if it felt livable and true, I would allow myself to stay in that mind set and explore it.  I remember reading an essay for English Composition on how mysegenation  might be a good thing.   It would give us curly hair, more musical talent  and that was the tone at the end of the lighthearted essay.  I actually thought about these things,  and the unthinkable thoughts  blew my mind open a little.  But it was turbulent and hard to take the ideas home and be met with amused condescension or fear and anger.  I used to have a recurring dream about running away from the Russians or the Nazis or some military force and trying to get my family to all stay together  and someone was always lagging behind, sometimes it was my dog,  and getting seen by the enemy and thus we would run on with me so anxious and trying so hard to keep us together.  And eventually we split apart  and in real life  our whole family fell into disarray and  divorce.

Home from college one summer, my mother went with me to swim at the reservoir.  She couldn't swim and wouldn't have been any use to me if I had gotten into trouble, but I was a strong swimmer and insisted on water on hot summer days.  While we were there, some "colored" guy came by.  He was young and good looking and he stopped and chatted with my mother.  She, in her polite, nice to negroes way, chatted back, and after we left for home she told me he had kept commenting about me, how good looking I was,  what a great figure I had, how she must be very proud.  She was puzzled and a little upset that perhaps something improper had occurred.  I listened to her babble on like I always did, but the gist of his message sunk in.  I started fantasizing about the guy.  My heart even now rises to my throat to think about how much trouble we could have gotten into.  I started driving past the feed store where he worked, hoping to catch a glimpse of my admirer, my hormones on the loose, bored with my small 2000 people town.   He was smarter than I and didn't come out.  He knew what awaited him.  Beaten up, run out of town, killed?  I don't think my father was into murder, but other might have been, who knows. 

It was near  the end of college that marches for civil rights began to take place--1960 or so.  I read "Black like me" which gave me the insight I needed into life in the South. The book was about a white guy who darkens his skin, shaves his hair and goes south, helped by some friends, to mingle with the black community and reports the anger fear and shame that was the life hidden from our view and disabused me of the white story that everybody was happy with segregation.  It seems strange now that that confirmation was necessary.

I had to wait until I was in graduate school to find a lover of color, a Nigerian, Victor Guani  a sweet man and a Catholic who prayed for me which puzzled and amused me, the atheist.  I could not see my own pain.    We got stopped by the Bloomington cops for being black and white together and they took our names.  And when I didn't finish my graduate  courses that semester and wasn't rehired as a freshman composition teacher, they told me it wasn't just because of my grades.  And then of course, I had their number.  They were just like everyone else--hypocrites and liars.  I enrolled in the Education Dept. and they were furious with me.  Called me in and said I needed to make a clean start somewhere else which I eventually did, but not before hanging out with the hangers out who had just come back from California where they said it was fantastic and I heard poetry  read at the newly opened coffee house by Allen Ginesberg and Gregory Corso.  Wow.  It was a message from afar and I left my adopted home, Indiana University, once more disillusioned and set out for the west.  

So it was the end of Barack Obamas speech at the AIPAC that brought back to me the moment when the veil was ripped away from those smiling  clinched jawed white southerners who kept saying that their system worked  and was echoed by all the white people around me, including my aunt and uncle  back from Mississippi.  They swore that everyone, even the negroes,  liked living separately.  Those three names had a world of pain embedded in them.   Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney.    They were my age.  If I hadn't been a little too far on the edge of cynicism I could have done what they were doing.  Having women with the men was one of the rules impressed on civil right workers in the south because southern attitudes toward women kept violence at bay.    

We saw the vicious murderous hatred that ruled the south. And the sheriffs who kept it that way.   By that time there were a few people coming back from working in the south and telling it like it was.  Southern blacks saying it's easy for you to come try to register me to vote, cause you're going back up north to school this fall.  I have to live here.   People had to be ready to die!  And they did die!   There was the dark underbelly of  all the white people I had grown up with and loved including Aunt Helen and Uncle Ray.  All the smiling faces and church going piety  hid broken dead bodies and Chaney castrated.  Kurtz said it best  The Horror   My people had done this for years and lied about it.

The point Barack makes to AIPAC, after of course pandering to them(I have been very angry at them for their lack of compassion for Palestinians and angry at all the politicians who parade before them seeking their support and money),  the point he makes is that Goodman and Schwerner were Jews.  He reminded them that  Jews were in the forefront of the civil rights fight, shoulder to shoulder with Afro-Americans.   It was a stunning moment.  Unexpected.   In mentioning that trauma  he touched a truth of the time.  He was given a standing ovation for giving Jews their due in the struggle for equality.  They knew something about prejudice.  The Holocaust was only 20 years uncovered in 1960.    

As the civil rights movement continued Black people showed their anger at all white people and pushed them away--except for MLK and more especially after his murder.  Malcolm X  and Mohammed  Elijah and the Black panthers didn't want whitey's help so that whitey could congratulate himself of being "a nice white person".  A rift occurred between the Jewish community and blacks.  I didn't understand it at the time.  The whole country was splitting apart, generations argued and railed with each other, black and white fought, and the peaceniks and war hawks were scathing in their attacks on each other. The 60's was a trauma of national proportions.   I was gone out of the country, leaving it for what i thought was forever, divorcing myself from my family and my country.    I hoped to leave the pain of separation and betrayal behind, but of course I  carried it with me  in my travels all around the world, buried,  looking for somewhere to live  "where the people were nice to each other" and realizing finally  no such place existed.

It is the genius of Barack to be able to touch the wound that has so traumatized us.  He is able to speak of what we have been so afraid of that we have hidden it from ourselves and from each other.  Hearing him remember the connection between  Jews and the  civil rights movement, my annoyance  with AIPAC melted away and I sobbed off and on all day, remembering the wound, my own and the country's, knowing  just the touch and the recognition is healing.  The truth shall set you free.  Whether he will be president  or whether as president he could do anything to further trust  and connection, I don't know.   But his presence right now as Democratic nominee is healing.  It is an opportunity to recognize the pain and betrayal of forty years ago and forgive.

Spring

Spring has arrived in the east. It's fullness manifest in the hardwood forest's response to warmth. Every tree is doing it and showing every stage and every shade of emerging leaf from the slight red tint of buds on bare branches to the full kelly green new leaf of the maple. The far hill I can see from the hill I live on is decorated in a solid panorama of tentative gold next to lime segueing into rust, changing to bright green lushness. I walked there when I first moved here only to discover it was not a forest but a residential area with some very big old trees accompanied by new trees both lining the streets and filling the backyards. Every plant is bursting with ecstatic lacy flowering. The streets are littered with gold maple blossoms. There are pink dogwoods and forsythia and tulips and hyacinth and azaleas in brilliant pink, making me feel like the world is really madly in love with itself after all. A mockingbird is trying to build a nest in the rhododendron outside the front door. Anya loves to climb up and sit in the top branches and discovered the nest half built and later that day, a robin sized grey bird with a twig came and sat on the electrical wires waiting for Anya to climb down and us to go inside and finally dropped the twig and went off to find a quieter nesting place. The mourning doves are calling to each other and the sparrows are building their nest in the rain gutters. Life is full of promise even in the midst of the Weltschermz of our era and will continue to bloom and blossom after our two legged reign is over or even, (is it too much to believe on a day like this?), if we learn to live with beauty.

A Walk to the River

Every afternoon I have been walking down to the beaches I go to in summertime and doing yoga on the sand. It is cold sometimes and too wet but worth it. Today I walked down past Sweet's Right past the gate were the first flowers. The little yellow daisy type which grows on the grey shist where nothing else can live and amazing me that they look so happy there. On down the road, I could hear the frogs making a racket in the wet soggy pond. Samson ran all around them, and they continued unabated, this huge chorus surrounded by silence. The sky was clear blue, and the unburned trees healthy and full of life. The day's hike was slowly unfolding. As I approached, the frogs got quieter and quieter and finally stopped altogether as I went past. Did they see my shadow, hear the vibration of my steps? Maybe there is a sentry keeping watch who gives the signal. It was very quiet and only as I was far down the hill did I hear them take it up again.

The snow had bent the buckbrush over the path. Past the Sweet's house, the road begins to be washed away, and a small rivelet wanders back and forth, making the walk more difficult. Several fir trees had toppled over pulling their roots out of the ground and I considered coming down here with the truck(which would be difficult)and picking them up(would need help) and taking them up to the house to plant since they all were maybe 10 years old and bigger than any of the seedlings that sprouted after the fire. Eventually I had to bend way over to get through the brush got stung in the check by small branches and scratched. Samson runs ahead and we make the turn to go past the Vale of grapevines . Big oaks had fallen in the winter. Saw a russula mushroom and on down and out to the point to sit and look at the confluence and wonder at the magnificence of water and rock and nature free to obey it's own urges. From the mouth of Grouse Creek on to Salyer it is all wilderness. So precious and free. I have to bow to it. The point is high enough to send the thrill of falling through me as I look over the edge. Samson is down on the beach already, but soon comes back up to join me, making me nervous as he stands right on the edge; so I go on down to the beach and start the yoga. I do some Qi Gong also, the mind is finally worn out of words and I am tired and relaxed. We walk over to Grouse Creek and walk up the bank. There are levels where the high water has come. Lower one gravel. Upper one, covered with leaves and moss. The Alder catkins droop gracefully from their branches. Sweetness.

We start back up the hill. It is going to be a long walk. Slowly, slowly. A huge madrone is down in the path with a rotten fir fallen over it. How heedlessly they fall, bashing slamming crashing. Nature isn't careful or neat. Wild country looks out of control. Life and death are intertwined, not neatly seperated as we try to order our world, keeping all the good things where we can see them, and all the bad things out of sight. Chaotic. I have learned to love it. I think about everything I have and everything that I have lost. It is the story of a life. The dignity of it moves me.

I rest and drink water at the Sweet's meadow while Samson sits and waits. We get up and walk on up the drive, slowly, an easy pace, the trip about over and again the frogs. They silence as I go by though I try to step lightly to see if they hear. They do.

Finally the truck. A scratch on the shoulder, two tics, sting on the face, tired legs and more water to drink. A good day.

Reflections on "Across the Universe"

On movie night in Hyampom "Across the Universe" was playing. It is an all Beatles' songs musical romance and recap of the 60's. Lots of New York scenes. Katz's Delicatessan was in the movie. Allan and I ate Sunday evening there and I, the wasp, learned to love corn beef. One Sunday while on acid the glasses stacked on shelves made broken and straight lines forming a Hexagram for the I Ching which of course I had look up when I went back to the fifth floor walk up where we lived. Everything meant something then. There was portent and profundity everywhere thanks to drugs. More poignantly for me, they showed a peace march in NY that reminded me of one that Allan and I marched in. I actually dreamed about it last night, telling my daughter in the dream that there were veterans against the war and a band(don't remember if that was the case) and that we marched with the artists(which was the case). Allan Ginesberg was at the head of our group, dressed at Uncle Sam and carrying a flag and Peter Orlofsky was a drummer boy and someone else played the flute, recreating the famous Yankee Doodle painting. Behind us was a theatrical group. They had constructed a fighter plane that strafed peasants who ducked or fell to the ground over and over as we walked along. Very New York. Very arty. The street was lined with onlookers some shaking their fists and some teen age boys yelling, "Faggots! Queers!" I expect Allan Ginesberg tipped his hat to them. We were changing the world or so we thought. And who could have imagined then that 40 years later my daughter, her husband and I would be marching again, this time in Boston. The marchers were much older generally. We grey haired ones smiled at each other recognizing ourselves from years past. And there were lots of us, spanning generations. The streets were not lined with supporters or fist shakers. We marched past a huge hotel where some well coifed high heels and suited men and women looked at us for a moment as a curiosity and turned to go into their corporate conference. Changing the world, uhhh, not so fast. But still, we keep the faith there being no other place to stand.

More Forms of Water

Richard came by today grumbling that he could have stayed in Chicago and had this kind of weather. Had to laugh as it really is the first winter in a while. Others who have been here long enough to know better have been saying there's been nothing like it. But in the 70's lots of winters were like this. It snowed deeper and just as long the year Jim and Glenn's house burnt down. And one winter in deep snow it got below zero. Kathy and Bill were here and we had rugs piled in front of the door for warmth. This year there has been more than a week now of snow turning to rain turning to sleet back into snow. Today sleety rain covers the road about an inch deep and Richard's tracks are the only ones visible.

The day has passed in an eye blink. Laundry, scrabble, meditation, scrabble, bake bread, scrabble when I look up I discover that the light is fading and I must get out for a walk before night comes. So Samson come with me sooo excited to be out. Sniffs, pees, runs, sniffs, pees again, and we walk past the slide which has slipped some more, but not really blocking the road yet, to the truck on the other side where I left a dozen eggs as I couldn't carry it all home Thurs. It makes me very happy this lone walk up the road to realize I have the cabin, the fire, the time to lollygag though another day. I have puttered around cleaning out the filing cabinet and burning old useless papers, including letters I saved of an argument with a friend sure that time would prove me right. I emptied old jars of who knows what into the compost. Let the birds decide. I watched out the window at the falling water in its various forms and now night has fallen. The solitude is complete.

The Thrill is Gone

Rain and rain and more rain all night and continuing. Rain that must be on the verge of sleet. It washes the snow off the trees and roofs but leaves it on the ground with bare patches of brown leaves showing through. A quail was right in front of the house this morning looking for seeds. They don't usually come that close, but hunger from days of snow covered earth has forced the issue. Amazingly the pelton wheel keeps turning. I listened for it last night, thinking it must have quit and planning how to deal with the intake submerged in freezing swollen waters and the added concern of the deer kill right above the intake, completely cleaned of meat. Just how hungry is that mountain lion?? And Samson is not so brave as his name might suggest.

So today I look out the window at the bleak world, the sad soggy snow and the silver rain that doesn't stop and turn to stoke up the fire. I hesitate to go get the dog his food or bring in the day's wood. The car needs to be put on the far side of the slide, but don't feel like leaving the sanctuary of the house. This could go on a while. And after all what are winters for if not to remind us that about the downside of it all. We had plans to go tobogganing and build the snowdog even higher. Pat was going to come cut wood. Now everything is put on hold. Survive is the word. Wait it out. Learn to love ground zero. For here we are. The river will be rising and later today, I'll go be stunned by water. Right now I have old writings to shuffle through and WOW an online scrabble site to enjoy. Maybe play real time with anyone who braves it out here. Maybe a pipe and some hot mulled wine, oh yeah. Let it rain.

travel from west to east

Snow in Boston and all flights cancelled. Had dinner with Tim and Una and John and Marni at the Pacific Cafe which was very fun especially as J and M were totally surprised by my presence as was I. Rode the BART in from the airport, just traveling, and did a movie and then took the bus to the restaurant way out Geary. Hungry for faces and there were lots on the bus and the complexion and accent changed as we went further west from darker and dreds and low pants to yellow and 50's hair and coats and into that came some mix of white(a young man looking like James Joyce with a Noam Chomsky book bag) got on with the crippled 60 something cane welding smiling grey hair. Like a kid hungry for candy I stared and loved them, loved even the hysterical mentally challenged girl who rode her emotions with the bus from laughing to crying. and from which some people were averting their eyes. I loved the all; I am one of them. The older woman with short hair and stiff knees who gingerly used the hand rails to de-mount the bus. God the city is rich and in spite of all the supposedly coming chaos and anarchy and the danger of warlords as the world falls apart, these people are my people; we accept each other's presence and everyone behaves quite kindly. The Asian woman apologizes and laughs as she falls on me with the jerk of the bus and I laughing back at life's unexpected encounters.

The America I love.

Whereas getting stuck in Denver was not so fun. We boarded the plan and waited and waited an hour until they confess that there are no brakes and we have to change planes. We have to take everything and hang around B26 until the guy tells us there is no reason to so that so I go off to get a Quizmo Sub something I have never had and sit on the ground and eat, immediately getting a stomach ache. A couple hours of unknown pass. I go to the Service Desk to tell my sad story of two days to get to Boston--it used to take a year or so, but I am modern. They call us back to B26 and the promise of a new plane, not the one with no brakes. Well and good. The seat covers are different and after deicing off we go for a smooth ride, the movie is Ratatouille which I have seen and so I read my Wyoming stories JA gave me and am surprised and gratified that suddenly we are landing in Boston always flying out over the city lights into the black ocean and then turning back in toward the land and the jewels of lights become monopoly buildings and then slowly become the world we move in as the plane bumps and lands braking on the runway and we are safe again on the ground.

My baggage does not come off the carousal and in despair I look over into the oversize baggage already landed and see the blue plastic bag I ties on my bad and beside it, my red bag ahhhh safe and into the taxi and home where I am greeted with wine and gnocchi and daughter and husband making nice for me as they stayed home all pajamaed and warm until I got there. Now I am downstairs in be with my computer with electricity that doesn't demand anything but money, no walks up the hill, no calories for watts. They go to bed. It is only 8 pm in SF. I am still awake and so happy to have this life of adventure and growing grandchildren and loving family and Hyampom(enough said in that one word) it holds a universe and one I am particularly fond of and feel most at home in, but I can live here quite comfortably and travel elsewhere at length and am lucky to be able to enjoy wherever I am keeping in mind it is all only temporary.

Dec. 3, 2007 Rain

The second wave of rains have come at last, persistent, wet, fresh. The power is out in town, the ground soggy and nothing to do save sit at the window and stare. About 40 robins have flocked around the house feeding on seeds in the grass, on worms, on the grapes hanging wetly on the vine, and the figs rotting on the ground. They are completely tuned to each other. All fly at an instant, a signal too fine for my eyes or ears. Then they return and settle down to feed again. They must be on their way to warmer climes and have awaited this message from the sky to feel south pulling on them strongly to begin to store up strength for the move. So too Doug and Denise--they leave Wednesday.

I spent the day inside letting go of the restlessness of mid morning and the urge to "do something". Called Ruth and she seemed more relaxed from the turmoil of yesterday. So I settled down like the robins, content, and paid a few bills, then put feet up on the desk, let the day giide by unsullied by effort. Peaceful. Quiet. Thoughts wandered through the misty downpour but all the flurry of buying pipe and digging ditches and burying line gave way the the truth of the moment slowly moving on to afternoon. Sitting with rain and the robins flocking, picking and pecking and flying off and settling down again in great stillness. Like my thoughts.

I went out for a walk in the foggy drizzly evening with the dog. My legs got soaked where the pancho doesn't provide cover. At almost dark I took a hot hot bath with cold fresh rain falling on me and all around as darkness itself fell deeper and Doug and Denise came back from Redding.

A good quiet day tending the fire in the stove and the flame in my heart, full of healing and gratitude and letting go.