Last Paige

A Flood of Words

2011-09-22T20:10:00.003-04:00

Harrisburg, PA, September 2011

The Susquehanna, already full from a year of very high level rains, threatens. Tropical Storm Lee saunters up the East Coast, adding insult to the injury of Hurricane Irene. Northern tributaries are overflowing by Thursday, September 8th, and in Harrisburg, the nutty Mayor orders all who live between Front and Third Streets to evacuate ... regardless of the fact that wide swaths of that area do not flood until the Susquehanna is at 31 feet or more.

Reason has never been one of this mayor's strong points. She does love power, though, and this natural disaster gives her an opportunity to strut.

Reports start coming in saying the river might hit 29.5 feet. Just for a point of reference for non-Harrisburgers, the Susquehanna floods in Harrisburg at 17 feet. The worst flood on record was during Hurricane Agnes in 1972, when the Susquehanna reached 32 feet. Half the city was under water.

As the new predictions arrive, and the rain keeps falling, my friend Paul, who lives in a very nice basement apartment, is told by his building manager to move everything upstairs. Everything.

We start packing.

The Mayor continues to blather in front of the cameras about closing down Restaurant Row because drunk people do obnoxious things like jump in the river. Having ordered everyone to leave, she realizes she'd better put out a second order for a curfew.

At one point she actually commandeers a rescue boat and has rescue personnel motor her through the already flooded streets of the city's most low-lying area--Shipoke. She waves her princess wave from under her bulky life jacket. That the empress is wearing no clothes via pearls and cashmere is only part of the entertainment of these few days.

On Calder Street, where I live, seasoned neighbors, including Betsy, who grew up here, tell me I have nothing to worry about. Yet worry is one of the things I do best. I laugh in the face of danger, then panic. After a stroll down to the river shows the mighty Susquehanna, always an impressive broad spectacle, spreading into the garden where my son had his prom pictures taken, I hurry back and commence cleaning my basement. Maybe I'm not going to lose my piano and furniture, but that basement has a lot of cool stuff, and I need to save it.

Hours later, cobwebs hanging from my sweaty brow, I have toted clothing to the second floor, stacked boxes of beloved children's picture books on top of high shelves, and hauled out four garbage bags of stuff that should have gone out long ago.

Nearing exhaustion and hefting containers filled with children's early photograph albums with Mickey Mouse motif covers, I uncover a nearly empty plastic storage box I haven't seen in quite a while. I open it. Inside are my master's paper on Emily Dickinson, my PhD dissertation on Iris Murdoch, and, in a plastic envelope, the manuscript of a novel that took me years to write, in between mothering three young children and working at jobs that actually paid. My family life in one crate, in photographs, and my intellectual self a tiny relic in one oversized plastic tub.

The electricity doesn't fail on my side of the street, much to my chagrin, as my neighbors are outdoors complaining about theirs being cut off, but I lose cable and Internet. I sit down to read.

The next day, I'm still reading. I fall asleep reading one section. But later, I flip pages compulsively, eager to find out how I ended it that draft around. I fall back in love with my characters.

The characters truly are like old friends. I've missed them. I forgive them. Who abandoned whom? I forgive myself. They're all nicer now than they were before, and perhaps so am I. There is no absoluteness about them anymore. Something within me has changed.

About the flood. I had not one drop of water in my basement. I'm awash in gratitude.

Incomprehensible Divinity

2011-07-31T15:20:00.000-04:00

It is Sunday morning and
before Mass,
turning on the stereo
for some radio news,
I find, neatly folded,
the brand new black
cotton top
that last week
I spent a quarter hour
fruitlessly seeking

It blended in with
the color of the speaker
and I walked past it
for days

Touching the smooth
fabric makes me
laugh at my
very human
limitations

And smile with
this miniature
revelation
that what we most
want is only lost
when we fail
to listen

Copyright 2011

A Very Full Nest

2011-06-13T18:14:00.000-04:00

Students who attend The Harrisburg Academy for 13 or more years receive a "survivor" award.

Annie started in 1993 ... thus, by extension, I have just survived 18 years of The Harrisburg Academy ... including: an exhausting 3-year teaching stint that knocked me to my knees; years of PTA/lower school library/classroom volunteering; chaperoning field trips as close by as Hershey Zoo and as far away as Freiburg with Mr. Gutwein et al; countless soccer games with some field hockey thrown in; endless All-School Concerts ... oh, the middle school band, oh, oh, oh; invisibility at events dominated by the ex's posse while I nearly cried wishing my family could see, if only my family could see; States Fairs; Science Fairs; mostly happy and successful but also some scary bad days for each kid; lots of runs with a forgotten sax; crazy years of rescheduling the dentist, the orthodontist, the doctor, to accomodate something much more vital like, err, a French quiz; endless listening on my part to the injustices of the school world; frustrating meetings with certain administrators leaving me feeling the injustices of the school world; poring over yearbooks to find every photo of one of my kids or one of their friends; uproariously funny drama productions including those meant to be serious; and ... and ... and ...

Diese Kinder. Die sind jetzt alle drei Erwachsene. Sie wissen viel mehr Geschichte und Wissenschaft als ihre Mutti, die auch kein Franzoesisch kann. Sie wissen viel mehr als alles, das ich unterrichten kann, das sie von mir gelernt haben koennten.

To the teachers who changed my children's lives: I can never repay you for the loving guidance and inspiration you provided them. You are my heroes as much as you are theirs.

To the students who trusted my home because I tried my best to listen and let live ... thank you for being good friends to my kids. They learned just as much from you as they did inside classrooms. So did I.

Now, in my home, all gussied up for the last of the graduations now concluded (although the cards and awards still litter the piano among the photos of the honored graduate), it's just me and the dog Chuck (and well, the ghost of Pandora as she pussy-foots about hoping to find something remotely edible), and the two crazy cats, Amber and Moony (Princess Whisper Moon ... everyone has a say in the naming in this Garden of Eden ) ...

There is no metaphor boundless enough to contain the joy I feel. This house cannot contain it. I feel like it must be spreading into neighboring galaxies, and yet that doesn't dim the way it shines right here.

My mind is peopled with smiling children with hairstyles from cute little blonde bangs and "pigtails" (yes, on Peter, too), to Sophie's carefully pressed and tamed brunette mane, to Pete's sparkling gray wig from The Miser. On the stage of my mind Annie pirouettes in a black and orange witch costume that made her poison ivy itch. Sophie confidently calls to one of her teammates across the soccer field. Peter tosses his guitar over his shoulders and he and AJ and the others slam across the stage on their knees. Annie sings. Sophie sings. Peter sings. Across the years, their voices harmonize.

These children have composed an opus for me. They've written me a multiple volume history of my own life that I will reread forever.

Thank you, Annie, Sophie, and Peter, for being my children. I couldn't have dreamed you any better than you are.

And now ... to a peaceful night's rest. Be well, knowing that no matter how far away you are ... Brazil, Peru ... or Baltimore ;-) ... you are right here with me. Always. And I'm right there with you.

Onward ... I can't wait to see what you're going to do next. And man oh man am I glad I still have plenty of energy to write a few new chapters of my own.

Because, surprising to us all, although it felt sometimes like we were just surviving, in the end, it turns out, we were all being born.

The Wingback

2011-05-05T12:19:00.001-04:00

Clawfooted
solid
velveteen
golden

Torn now
worn now

Underneath
is structure
solid as
memories
of posing
smiling
in a prom gown

Recovering
my mother's chair
would require
exposing her
inner secrets

And how
could I ever
choose
a better color

The Abandoned Hound

2011-04-08T15:33:00.002-04:00

Skyline Drive slices
the lean landscape.
Her soul is hungry.
Her ears and eyes
drool exhaustion.
We are at a stalemate.
Then she reaches
and crosses
a divide as grand
as a canyon.
Her long face lies in my lap.
I too had to get to the end
of myself
before resting
in the kindness of my savior.

Thanks to Steve, Todd, and Pat for the words you read above. All I had to do was break them into lines.

Copyright 2011

Superwoman

2011-03-03T16:07:00.000-05:00

Visit www.newpaige.wordpress.com for a post called Superman's Already Here, on the lies told in "Waiting for Superman," a so-called documentary about failing American schools that was actually funded in large part by the Gates Foundation and supports charter schools and the privatization of American public schools. American schools are not failing; they only look like they are when measured by standardized test scores that correlate to the economic status of student families. Then, schools are judged by their scores on basic skills as opposed to 21st Century Skills (data interpretation, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, adaptability, entrepreneurship, initiative, and more) and penalized if they don't "measure up." That gives federal and state governments the opportunity to cut funding for "under-performing" or "failing" schools when measured by inappropriate data -- as opposed to increasing graduation and college admission rates and falling dropout rates -- in order eventually to close them and hand students and tax dollars over to private education companies. These companies will pay teachers less, using the same tax formula, and thus make millions of dollars in profits on the backs of children, now being less well served. Some of that profit will go to campaigns for the very same far-right legislators who started the cycle. What happens when the bulk of public schools are privatized? What happens when teaching is de-professionalized? Teachers need supports and schools need proper funding. Without both, public schools will fail, and so will the municipalities in which they serve children. As go schools, so go the cities. In the end, all of us will suffer. Our democracy will be undermined. And the top 1% of earners will have won.

Unhappy Unhour

2011-02-06T10:10:00.001-05:00

In those days
when the dark
came early and
the unfinished work
on the desk
was haunting
the corner pub
promised warmth
inside
and out
camaraderie
light banter
and a glow

Fire is comforting
but not
when it comes with a price
so profound
with a burning curiosity
what was said
what unsafe paths traveled

In those days
the morning light dimmed
an hour was a day too long
even in its wintry brevity

Waking to a day
in which happy means happy
an hour means an hour
is like singing
four-part harmony
in perfect tune

Copyright February 2011

Incandescence

2010-09-01T11:03:00.003-04:00

She is brightness
like her sister and
her brother both
they are incandescent
but not like a bulb
no
like the heat
that infuses a summer day
like the embers
on the hearth
like intuition
like empathy
like a light touch
like a star
visible from any place
on the globe

Lisa E. Paige
Copyright 2010

Surrender

2010-08-05T16:01:00.001-04:00

Salt water stings
our hot skin
as the bright
white light mellows
softening us until
we touch
unintended underwater
where silky seaweed
surprises us and
suggests we
surrender
to the forces of the moon

Copyright 2010

Badger

2010-07-27T09:49:00.002-04:00

This is not a children's poem.

Sometimes we are
busy as a beaver
sneaky as a weasel
we have nine lives
like a cat
or deeply love
and depend on
our best friend
the dog.

Sometimes we have
a memory
like an elephant's
or we're shy
as a mouse
or roar
like a lion
when we should
bleat like a lamb.

This is not a children's poem.

Sometimes we're cougars
and our claws come out.

We so often follow
like sheep or
are pushed along
like cattle or
are more stubborn
than a mule or
act like an ass.

And that brings me
to the equine paradox:
there are more horses' asses in the world
than horses.

This is not a children's poem.

What of the badger?
The badger badgers.
And usually it works
at least for him.

More persuasive
than the snake
was Eve
or was Adam just
more easily turned?
Unlike women
(according to many men's analogies)
she didn't have to badger
or bitch.

This is not a children's poem.

Sometimes tautology
is the best we can do.
We are what we are
and it is what it is.
We're human so
we're simply not a butterfly
but don't we see that
we are as stunning and
have a butterfly's fragility
that steals the breath?
That we can --
if we wish to --
stop crawling and
(not without a chrysalis phase)
discover flight.

Believe me.
This is not a children's poem.
Children have not yet forgotten how to fly.

Copyright 2010

Coals

2010-07-20T10:01:00.002-04:00

Dancing on coals
as red as frostbite
will ignite
the forgotten lessons
that formed
like ice particles
in our warm breath
that day
when we sang
by the church
joining hands
with the dark
and the empty
as we hungered
for comfort and heat
yet fumbling
with numb fingers
traded our
worn scarves
to strangers
for gratitude.

Copyright 2010

Piercings

2010-07-19T13:07:00.002-04:00

I told her
it's trite to say
that her heart is pierced
even if it feels
as real as a paring knife
on a peach.

But when she lifted her shirt
immodestly
and eagerly said
it won't hurt -- do it quickly --
I'll just look away --
jewels fell like those
that had colored her fingertip
when she signed
a childish lasting pact
-- with a serious look --
then mingled her life with
that of her best friend.

It was through
in an instant
followed by
a captive ring
with a crimson droplet gem
a prism
reflecting the truth
of an eternal metaphor.

And she smiled with defiance.

Copyright 2010

Unshu Mikan

2010-07-08T13:53:00.001-04:00

Oranges under my skin
beg to be peeled
until I trickle
over your fingertips,
my pulp under your nails.

Better to juice me
than slice me in quarters,
although you already have me.

I don't mind being squeezed
until trust is sweet on your lips.

Did you know that satsuma
-- unshu mikan --
is a mutant from Japan?

It means honey citrus.
Tart and sugary, like me.

Copyright July 2010

Right here

2010-06-19T08:25:00.002-04:00

Somewhere over the rainbow
(alto II part burned into my brain)
I sing about platinum shining
where leprechauns lurk
(those lying midget bastards)
and the pot of gold
on Wall Street
crumbled into dust
like the dying
(the ashes of whom
weeks later
dusted my shoes)
and yet I cannot
stop from singing
and the song rises
blue and gold and crimson
above a turret
above a spire
scraping the sky
like ivory
against the night
above 200 soaring voices
all knowing
that only fools
seek gold
instead of the rainbow
(yes a Ding an sich)
all the voices
are blinded by the hues
shining through clouds
and rain and hail
and blasting through
thick Gothic walls
in stained glass allegories
inflaming those who do believe
(in justice
in peace
in tolerance
in love
in ourselves
and in what we carry
in all that's spoken
all that's holy)

Copyright June 19, 2010

Time

2010-05-24T07:32:00.001-04:00

unfurled
by urban gusts
swept away
by undercurrents
moistened
by spray moorings
loosened
salted sparkles
in the granite
in the sand
neither tide
nor time
can be told

May 21-24, 2010 Rockport and Gloucester "These things take time," he said, and gazed beyond the sea. I'm never sure what he sees.

Blind Drunk

2010-04-29T10:07:00.002-04:00

Groping forward
her cane feeling
for the walkway
the bag she carries
rips.

Bud Ice rolls
into the street
as she cries out
in fear of a darkness
that can swallow
more than the colors
of the sun.

The bluest of skies
her backdrop
she curses,
kneels to grasp
the only savior
that she knows.

She doesn't want my help.

And anyway
I am loathe to gather up
another's poison.

It's only Bud.

Even a frothy
stein of Weissbier
sweetened by raspberry
tart with a lemon slice
isn't worth death.

Copyright 2010

Wings

2010-04-20T21:36:00.004-04:00

Soaring on steel
I fly so close
to the sun
igniting hope
and then
singed
falling
falling

To dust and ashes

Voids unfilled
by parting
curtains
legs
or souls
shrink and vanish

Blinding rays
through bending crystal
scorch me

On bended knee
I pray

The sun sets
I'm alone
in the silky dusk
and peace floats in
on wings of gossamer

Hello, God.

Copyright 2011

Yesterday

2010-04-15T08:52:00.001-04:00

The below poem was inspired this morning by an incredibly brave person I know.

Today, I am a father;
Yesterday, I didn't believe in one.
Today, I soar on wings of gossamer;
Yesterday, I couldn't see my angel.
Today, I awaken in sunshine;
Yesterday, The rain fell on me alone.
Today, I dance in golden fields;
Yesterday, I cried despite the roses.

Today, I am a mother;
Yesterday, I held life inside me.
But I was not born.

Security Systems

2010-03-10T05:07:00.001-05:00

Your reputation
falsely sullied
cannot destroy you,
because the world knows better

Your child's candy
eaten by an adult
is the gift of a lesson
to be learned

Rent not paid
does not have to have a cost,
as you have wealth

Betrayal of your trust
needlessly and selfishly done
cannot hurt you,
for you too would tell the truth if asked

Losing serenity
so carefully built
is not God's theft
but your own

Your karma
is your payment and
it covers all the bills

Doors

2010-03-03T08:54:00.001-05:00

Locks on your mind
Spiral stairs always
downward falling, falling
Dreaming tsunamis
drowning in the power
of an earthquake
Keys lost
Keys found
Muscles not used
throbbing with effort
tense with the climb
The top of the staircase
will never be reached
yet we ascend.

Red

2010-03-01T07:26:00.000-05:00

A rose is a rose is a rose until it becomes so red it spontaneously combusts, ignites like the outskirts of a sunset, flames with ecstacy emblazoned across the sky like that of a secret finally spoken, a door opened wide.

Valentine's 2010

2010-02-12T10:12:00.001-05:00

Do not look
behind the curtain
but within where
if you can find God
you will also find
courage,
wisdom,
and your heart.

Share them.

No

2010-02-09T05:53:00.001-05:00

regrettable

when yes

or even maybe

cramps

your neck

hands that

were tangled slip apart

like knots coming undone
you slip away from your mooring

Midwinter

2010-02-08T05:33:00.001-05:00

Even shadows
are more welcome
than silence.

In the enveloping
dark of 3 a.m.
the pulse of the living pauses.

Scattered are the leaves of
thought upon a frozen ground
of wonder and confusion. Snow itself freezes.

Oh the clawing of the cat
who thinks it's time
for canned food.

The whisper of her fur against my face.
The wound once again open.

Risk is courage, courage risk.
And the lover is the love.

Thank you Keats, and Yeats, and
oh sister, mother, lonely Emily,
who showed me that finite infinity
lives between words.

And yes, thank you those
who sat around the fire
spinning epic like a hooded cloak.

Purring

2010-02-06T23:19:00.001-05:00

The controlling metaphor
went on too long
like a scarf around the world
or a sweater with one sleeve
still in the basket.

See? I stretched it.
Then I gave it up.
It makes me look so uncommitted.

But to other things I am devoted.
Brownies. Chocolate chip cookies. Apple pie.
Hope.

Every morning the cat expects
a bowl of canned food
before she dashes out the door
for just a minute.
Once she is fed she loses interest.

February

2010-02-06T22:48:00.001-05:00

Thankful we are
that February is the shortest month
that of cold to which we have at last
become accustomed.

In heavy ice storms
the newest branches
snap as fragile as new love.

And inside February's roses
die as we clothe ourselves in wool.

But when snow falls
it blankets us until
we dream of promises,
of springtime.

By the river where I walk,
the winds are scathing.
At night they howl
like lonely wolves
who wake the children.

Despite the bleakness
we have not forgotten forsythia.

Let no day pass
unkissed into the night,
and no slumber silence
the diamonds in our eyes.

White out

2010-02-06T20:37:00.002-05:00

MEMO To: Readers

From: Lisa

Date: 2/6/10

Re: Gratitude

Life is hard. I am grateful. Life is joyous. I am grateful. Life is sickness and death. I am grateful. If we try hard enough, we grow. I am grateful. Doing the next right thing can hurt. I am grateful. Doing the next right thing guarantees no like return. I am grateful. Giving love to others, though, brings love from everywhere. I am grateful. I try to love those who try. I am grateful. Good people love me. I am grateful. Good people trust me. I am grateful. Laughter eases me. I am grateful. I am giving. I am grateful. I am honest. I am grateful. I make mistakes. I am grateful. A huge February blizzard covers the gray of our world. I am grateful. The blinding white is a reminder of purity. I am grateful. I remember how to pray. I am grateful. Love, real love, can be killed. I am grateful. Love, real love, can be fed, nurtured, held. I am grateful. These things make up my life. I am grateful. Life is a place; meet me there. I am grateful.

Warm me

2010-01-27T16:08:00.000-05:00

I am still knitting scarves for kids who are cold. Kids for whom education is the great equalizer, their only hope in this capitalist democracy where the poor most often stay poor and the rich get richer ... and bailed out. I'm still knitting scarves for kids whose teachers are getting disheartened because of the political battle being fought over whether they're teaching their students to read or just sitting around on their asses being useless, letting their students fail. I was a teacher in a high school for three years. If someone told me that I wasn't teaching my students, I very well may have walked out of that school that day and never gone back. It was hard enough work without being discredited and insulted. Are their teachers out there who are burned out, or have simply given up, and are just collecting a paycheck until they can retire? Yes, of course there are. But they're not the rule, by any means, particularly in a school district where excellence has been stressed -- and demanded -- for nearly a decade. My heart goes out to teachers who, every day, dig down deep in their hearts to wrap warm scarves of knowledge and thought and caring around their students, warming them to their very hearts, hearts so easily broken. I can't stop knitting.

The dark to my light

2010-01-22T18:28:00.001-05:00

There is a kind of night
when the stars are
so bright
so aflame with the answers
to our doubts
that the moon is present
but goes unnoticed.

On this kind of night
if you look up
you will catch your breath
like a butterfly
in your hand
for you are caressing
the universe
for the first time.

There is a light
against the endless void
the ineffable dark infinity
against which I too burn.

Copyright 2010

I Don't Like Empty Shoes

2010-01-22T18:19:00.001-05:00

Punctuated wingtips perched on shag carpet. Nothing feathery about them. Heavier than granite they are like the stone on my heart. Worn as soft as kid. We could not let him go in just his socks. Another pair cradled in white tissue. White leather as supple as a petal with blossoms painted on the soles. More than once I forced them on her toes, the little buds, they were, while she giggled. In Advent, German children lay out empty shoes. The younger ones peer over window sills with fabled hopes of sparkling sugared satisfaction. But the elder children hunger for the contrast of orange and of chocolate. Copyright 2010

A break in the pattern

2010-01-22T18:17:00.000-05:00

I need a break. I'm still finishing scarves created from left-over wool. They are colorful, whimsical, and quick to make. They make me happy. I'm working on a few rows of my life right now, instead, and it feels good. In the meantime, I am reworking a few poems from the past. Bear with me. I'll get back to more complex knitting in a week or so. The truth is, I don't like following patterns word-for-word.

Lacunae

2010-01-22T18:15:00.000-05:00

I wrote the following poem years ago, feeling very distant from my origins. Now I feel my origins within, but having revised this poem, am sharing it. When did I start awakening in the night afloat on a black velvet pool of soothing self-pity? Companioned by dream lovers father mother sister in starched shirts and dresses in rooms long emptied and even destroyed. So many heartbeats in the night so many different patterned breaths like fingerprints upon my tender senses. All dwindles with the dawn. But the first light cannot fill the gaping cavern widening within its center large enough for swallowing the sun. Copyright December 1995

Applause

2010-01-22T18:03:00.000-05:00

I think I was A good mother Yes, I say, yes you were -- the past tense ringing out like a minor chord. Her room is bare. A throw she crocheted is folded at the foot of her bed. A faded B&W photo of my sisters and me at an impossible age of innocence complements the standard-issue crucifix. I wheel her to the "activities" room where a rinky-dink upright stands humbly against the wall. Its keys are as cracked, yellowed, and spotted as my mother's hands. I play for her remembering scales I played by rote as she washed dishes after supper. How awful that I never understood why. When the last of the Schumann faded she brought her crippled hands together in some sort of approximation of applause. Her eyes -- still confused -- begged me for clarity. A moment of perfection with my mother will not happen now, I think. Or is this moment the one? Copyright 2010

Flawed

2010-01-20T11:13:00.000-05:00

We all are. But how often do we look at our flaws with some specificity, the way we'd assess a finished sweater -- one sleeve too long, a cable imperfectly turned, baggy at the waist? When I have low blood sugars, the world looks dark, and I'm snippy. I have musical tourettes, which annoys many, and I don't care. I automatically assume that those who were born with silver spoons in their mouths aren't people I'd want as friends. I overestimate the selflessness of my generosity. I fail to fill the gas tank until I'm on fumes. Boredom irks the hell out of me. I'm restless. I don't suffer fools graciously. I eat ice cream right from the carton. I often forget to put out the trash on collection day. Although I am efficient, I procrastinate and am easily distracted. I bristle against those who assume any incompetence on my part, even if it's there. I'm an education snob. I don't vacuum frequently enough. I don't do home upkeep regularly, resulting in properties that look worse when I sell them than they did when I purchased them. I throw other people's things away. I drive so aggressively it can be dangerous. I text too much. I get obsessive about new pleasures. I don't always follow through, especially with resolutions to work out at the gym. I leave my dry-cleaning at the shop way too long. I can be very snide, and enjoy it. It takes me too long to confront my loved ones with issues we need to resolve. I lose myself in love. Sure, there are more. But for now, I feel purged, like a Russian Orthodox congregant confessing at the altar for all to hear. I don't believe in sin. But I do believe in flaws. The most beautiful handknit garments, filled with love, are most often slightly flawed somewhere or other, like Persian carpets, into which imperfections are woven. The value on these items is higher than those machine made. If only we were more certain of the beauty of imperfection when we were young.

Ripping my heart out

2010-01-15T12:39:00.001-05:00

I'm now three days behind on this blog and on my stated knitting goal (already!), and I still haven't gone out to purchase the yarn for a new project. But then, things have been a bit hectic, a bit disheartening, a bit dark. And not only in Haiti. For three years, I've worked with some of the most dedicated, ethical education experts imaginable. The Superintendent of Schools in Harrisburg, Dr. Gerald W. Kohn, aka Jerry, is known and recognized -- Superintendent of the Year 2009! -- for his energy, experience, and vision. He is relentless in trying to improve children's lives. He prides himself on stealing the best talent from other districts. They are good people. They do the next right thing, every time. But the forces-that-be conspire against the right thing to do. This nation is built on public education -- equal opportunity for all. But now, politicians want to mess with that, for reasons that are quite obvious. We've privatized the prison system, we're working on privatizing our national security, the military industrial complex has been private all along, and we tried the privatization of finance with such stunning results. The conservative among us seem to have no problem risking our children's futures. Gentle reader: Have you seen "Wicked"? I saw it with the original cast, thank you daughter Annie, who knew it was the musical to see. Anyway, it's so true that you'll hear me say it again and again and again: "No good deed goes unpunished." I once quoted "Defying Gravity" regarding a relationship lost, but now that I've grown, I know in my heart that it's not about that at all. It's about ethics.

And if I'm flying solo

At least I'm flying free

To those who'd ground me

Take a message back from me

Tell them how I'm

Defying gravity

I'm flying high

Defying gravity

And soon I'll match them in renown

And nobody in all of Oz

No Wizard that there is or was

Is ever gonna bring me down!

In Port au Prince this week, through natural causes, thousands have died, thousands more will. So many children are left without homes. We couldn't really stop an earthquake. But an earthquake of our own making is about to shake our nation just as hard.

Do you know how many children right here in Harrisburg don't have homes, or food, or any hope other than what's provided right there in their public schools? Why are newly homeless Haitian children pictured on Page 1, above the fold, while our own are invisible?

Even the successful children in Harrisburg, like those who have benefitted from all the hard work of the colleagues I so admire, those who have applied themselves for 12 years and are doing brilliantly despite all the obstacles they face, are not above the fold.

Oh, I know why; I don't mean to be disingenuous. But it angers me, profoundly. It doesn't have to be this way.

My readership is small, and I'm most definitely preaching to the choir, but this I believe: each one of us can change the world. Please, each of you, hear my plea. We have to fight what is coming. It's as stealthy as our nation's high end bombs. It will hit its target unless we fight.

And is there no better metaphor than that of battle? I think there is.

We have to knit our own lives with those of these children. We are all of one fabric, Haitians, Harrisburgers, and all.

Nothing that happens in public education, a world where the endless labors of good people often go unrecognized except by the students who love them, should be about revenge, about self-interest.

But it seems sometimes to me that in this life, we knit rows and rows and rows of warmth, only to watch them get ripped out. Yet, we cannot stop knitting.

Time for a new project

2010-01-15T12:34:00.000-05:00

For a six-foot-tall boy, a six-foot-long scarf. I run my fingers over it, rows and rows of memories. Peter pedaling his Big Wheel down the steep slope of the driveway, hanging a sharp right and then waiting for my okay to zoom across the busy street to head down Second Street toward the little school where he went to Kindergarten. Peter jamming on his saxophone, sliding across the stage with his guitar, hunched over the Steinway keyboard. Peter letting his pony-sized dog pull him down the street on his scooter. Peter in his infant seat, squinting up at the sun. Peter concentrating on a Lego project, after begging me to separate the pieces by color, which of course I would do. Peter in his headphones, slouched on the sofa, his laptop a constant. Peter shuffling off to walk the dog whose head is now only as high as Peter’s hip. Yards and yards of life. It’s when you think there’s nothing left that can surprise you that it happens. Pete now converses. He inquires about my day. He shares information about his. One night when he was an infant, his barking croupy cough awakened me. He was gasping for breath, and I sat with him for hours in the steamy bathroom. He clung to me, she who would hold him until the fever broke. These days, every day before school he hugs me and pats me on the back. He’s still nonverbal at that hour, but he takes the time to speak in other ways. I have to fight the urge to cling to him. When do men learn not to communicate? In my experience, men want to be left alone. My father was the first in my experience, of course. He’d disappear into the basement for what seemed like weeks, only appearing to eat and grimace. The pattern repeated. Don’t bother me when I’m cranky. Don’t pry when I’m stressed. Don’t talk at the dinner table. I labored to make sure that my son would know how to listen, and how to share. And yet I have feared for years that no matter how much I encouraged him to defy gender expectations, he’d succumb. And then, you meet someone who listens and asks questions that relate to what you’ve said – thoughtful questions. Someone who says that communication is essential. And you remember that your son writes poetry that becomes lyrics for his songs. Just when you think there’s nothing left that can surprise you, it happens. I guess I’m ready for a new project.

Counting stitches

2010-01-15T12:12:00.001-05:00

There’s no knitting today. Instead, I dismantle the Christmas tree. Carefully, I wrap each precious ornament, some colorful glass, some cute little figures in wood, in tissue paper, and lay it gently into the storage box. The tree is more fragrant dry and dead than it was while soft and fresh. A human wouldn’t smell so good untended. Tearing the strings of lights off the stiffened branches isn’t easy, and I struggle hurriedly, because I’m due out for lunch in just 40 minutes. I realize that no matter what pleasure lies ahead, my compulsion to finish what I’m doing controls me. I have to get that last strand off, because after lunch, I won’t want to have this chore to face. Instead, I’ll want to bask. The neighborhood Italian deli is warm and bright. The roasted red pepper in my mortadella and mozzarella sandwich is sweet, like the moment. I am beginning to understand how different I have become. Counting stitches has reminded me how to attend to each moment. And this afternoon, each moment is something to etch into memory. I’m surrounded by quiet kindness. There is coffee, with raw sugar and thick froth that stays on my upper lip. There is the soft blue sleeve of a sweater that I cannot resist the urge to touch. And finally, there is the realization that for the first time since I turned sixteen, I am not saddened by the end of Christmas. The glorious season isn’t ending, but leading to the birth of every new day. Perhaps that is what the story means. Our uncertainty of what awaits us under that star is exactly what draws us forward. Pack up your gifts, and join the journey.

Dropped a stitch

2010-01-12T19:46:00.000-05:00

Technology and knitting. Each has its advantages. But in knitting, if I drop a stitch, it's my fault. Miscalculate the gauge, my fault. With technology, it's never my fault. I now have two blog posts on my laptop, not posted. The laptop refuses to connect to my wireless router. The battle I did with it on the weekend was so frustrating that I wanted to stab myself in the eyeball with the nearby knitting needle. Now that would have been my fault. I wrote those two entries, but now having processed the weekend more fully, they seem out of date, frail compared to the strength of what I am currently thinking. Monday comes and goes, and still no luck with the wireless connection. I'm on my son's iBook. But sometimes a lack of connectivity via wireless forces one to seek different types elsewhere. It started Friday. I was leaning my chin on my hands at my desk, the last one in the office other than the cleaning staff. The vacuum cleaner was approaching. I had had plans to meet a dear friend, but her in-laws had arrived unexpectedly, and she couldn't go out. Story of my life ... best laid plans. Everyone tells me to plan, but truly, my life is ruled by serendipity. Because that's what defined Friday night and the following weekend, and there is nothing I could have planned that would have improved what occurred. A new email appeared on my screen. Okay, no Karen, but instead an email. A sorry comfort, I thought, until I read its one line message, and became intrigued. Minutes later, I was on the telephone with this unknown person, discovering all that I had in common with someone I'd never met in person. He was looking for some information on a common project. And there I was, stumbling through a conversation in which we tripped into unexpected territories, learning that we are both Unitarians with liberal views -- as opposed to Unitarians with conservative views?? -- and a bit worn down by life that day. He'd had his plans cancelled, too. The next day, over lunch, we found out that we have the same color eyes, a passion for equity and justice, and the belief that gratuitous meanness should be punishable by law. All of this doesn't seem so extraordinary, perhaps. But what was happening? A new color was being introduced into the fabric of my life. On Sunday morning, I sat with the other members of the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg choir, fondly called "The Unisingers," in the church we share with another congregation on the second Sunday of the month. This new practice is the effort of a mainly white congregation from an A-frame church just out of the city of Harrisburg to serve a less white neighborhood, a less privileged population, offering them dignity as well as charity. I had considered it folly. Barriers, I have learned through working at a school district that is 85% African American and 10% Latino, are not so easily broken, no matter how well-intentioned either party may be. How astonished I was to hear from a few speakers at the service that day that the second Saturday breakfasts are working very well. Hundreds are coming out to be served breakfast and get to know our congregation. Neighbors are welcoming us with open arms. Activists and social service people in the community are befriending us. Our minister had said that serving in this community would save no one but ourselves ... but I was seeing differently that morning. I saw that with every new contact made, more than two people were being saved. It would spread, just as surely as every successful connection made through my work has a ripple effect, as well. And next to me, my fellow second alto was weaving yellow into the blue of her sock. I've worked on cables, complicated patterns for suits that fit infants, turned the heel of a sock, built the thumb of a mitten. But I've never worked a color pattern. Megan said she could show me. I loved the alternating colors, knit together tightly. Leaving the church, I recognized my new friend standing at the door. He'd come to my Unitarian service instead of his. He'd heard the motivating speakers. The idea our congregation was making a reality, despite naysayers like myself, may now travel further. And the sparkling color in his eyes and my excitement to see him were blended with my gratitude for the spiritual experience I'd just had, and the additional moving blending of our voices with those of a Gospel group from the community. It was a multicolored morning. One of beauty, and joy.

Knitwit

2010-01-07T22:40:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I returned to singing. (I brought the seed-stitch scarf project along.) It felt great. My diaphragm expanded, making more room for my heart. I felt like the Grinch after seeing that the Whos wake up and join hands in a circle to sing the Faroo Daroo song (or whatever it's called) without any packages, boxes or bags. They may have no gifts, but they still have each other, and they still have their song. About seven years ago, my daughter Annie (who was then only 14) and I joined the choir at the Unitarian church we attend. We're both second altos, so we were able to sit together, blend our voices, and doodle on one another's music (oops, fellow Unisingers, you didn't read that). We'd giggle at the silly tenors and bases who were constantly wisecracking and acting out, as if they were teenagers. We'd yawn toward the end of the night and wonder when it would end ... and then burst into our second winds on the car home, loudly performing the parts we'd just learned, and tweaking them to suit our over-tired hysteria. But the memory I cherish the most is of hearing her sweet, haunting voice in my ear. After she left for college in the fall of 2006, I returned to choir alone. The chair beside me in the Alto II section was inhabited by someone else. I didn't stay with it long. I felt like I was sleepwalking through life that fall, except for the times that I awakened in the middle of the night, shaking with anxiety, terrified that I'd never get over the sudden and painful disappearance of my first child. I'd wanted her to go to the college of her choice, and she did, but damn it, it was 400 miles north, and such a good choice that she was absorbed by her new life and didn't really need to talk to me much at all. I left her room intact, and whenever I had the courage to enter it, the lingering scent of her brought me crashing onto her bed, wracked with a deep sense of loss even though she was alive and well and even thriving. It was only partly about Annie. It was also about the beginning of the end of that part of my life, when nothing else mattered when one of them had a fever, when waking them up was the first task of my day. When I ate what they liked. Even with my two younger children still with me, everything changed the day Annie packed her boxes and trunk into the back of her father's Acura and drove away. The yellow VW bug she'd driven for two years was in my driveway. Just looking at the empty, stationary representation of her quirky effusiveness made me feel like an empty walnut shell. So I find it ironic that four years later, having pulled myself through years of alternating depression and manic self-distraction, intentional change and growth and the accompanying abandonment of delusion, now that I am finally enjoying the transition into the next phase of life, and anticipating with enthusiasm the impending freedom after Child 2 and Child 3 go to college, I've been told it's time to rehash every miserable experience of my life. I've been in more therapy than hippos have been in mud. I've been put on more different antidepressants than Baskin Robbins has flavors. Some of this therapy and medication worked, but I didn't really start feeling myself (a person I'd not seen since I was about 18) until last summer, the last summer of the first decade of the 21st Century, when I made a huge decision -- never to drink another alcoholic beverage again. Doctors and psychiatrists tell you not to drink with the meds, and it's right on the pill bottles. But hey, who takes that seriously, right? A glass of red wine a day actually helps women live longer. I don't remember reading anywhere that the occasional night out drinking martinis, then wine, then kahlua is supposed to extend one's life. But it sure made it easy to forget that the empty nest was just around the corner. Until the next morning, that is. So, now well into this exercise, and happier than I can remember ever having been, on the advice of other determined nondrinkers, I've been told to "do an inventory" -- that is, confront my defects, resentments, and general mishegas through writing a long rumination on the moments of my life that have contributed to my current despair, anger, fear, and hate ... wait a minute, am I in Star Wars? I'm supposed to start with my earliest memory, and trace back through my entire life looking for memories that still make me cringe. I'm a writer. I go into detail. I don't have enough years left for this. I'm almost finished with the scarf. It's deliciously black, and nubby, and soft. I often feel let down at the end of a project, as is common when I finish reading a long, gripping novel. Perhaps that's why I didn't used to finish my knitting projects, but keep them around, always having them somewhere in a basket like a puppy never grown into a dog. Nothing stays the same, right? And nothing ever changes the way you think it will ... When I enthusiastically ordered my first drink ever, a Tanqueray and tonic (how sophisticated, I'd thought) to celebrate my "coming of age," I wanted everything to be different ... right then! I wanted all the freedom that comes with being an adult. And instead, I took the first sip, and my very first step toward becoming enslaved. We knew so little as teenagers, and so many of us still don't admit what we don't know, today. I hereby openly admit: I've been a knitwit, fumbling through life. But not anymore. Bring it on, rotten memories. I'm ready. I'm going to condense you, dehydrate you, and brush your dust off my life. I went out tonight, and I refound my voice. And you know what's amazing? It sounds a lot like Annie's. Binding off.

Scarf of Gold

2010-01-06T21:46:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer. Moving into a new mode called "Speed Writing," akin to Speed Chess, or Speed Knitting, in which one uses size 15 needles and bulky wool, guaranteeing a finished product in about three hours. Sometimes they tend toward the gargantuan, like the mock turtle I made Annie last year that is too big to pack in a reasonably sized suitcase and still allow for other garments, but the satisfaction, the satisfaction. I tend to edit myself too much, which can carry these blog entries into the wee hours, and make me dysfunctional the next morning when I'm at my day job, which pays the mortgage. Can't be doing that. Irresponsible. So, I'm trying this out. My perfectionist nature is screaming in pain, but c'es la vie. And now that brings us to the topic below, which is written with as many nonsequitor paragraphs as the writing it disparages. I guess that could be considered ironic, or just plain bad rhetoric. Tonight: Grateful for a warm home, complete with a roof and a sofa. Doesn't hurt that my daughter has let me use her laptop, as mine refused to connect through the new router. I've had to wheedle. Meanwhile, while she was using it, cuddled into her own sofa corner with a blanket, my occupation was ... knit two, purl two. The scarf grows, the seed stitch remains metaphoric of this blog. I can see both. When I write, the letters pile up in crazy-assed lines, and, if I put them here, you can read them. The miracle of the Interwebs. We can put our insanity and meandering thoughts out here for all to observe, and to grow by. This activity is what I do today, but it's of course informed by experiences I once regretted or considered a waste of time. Since, I've learned that no experience should be regarded as so. Except, perhaps, avoidance and/or addictive over-indulgence in the self-seeking search for happiness that cannot be reached that way. But even missing out can teach you to wake up and live more fully, if you let it. For a long time, I regretted missing my chance to enter academia via the tenure track. But if I had, would I be writing this perspicacious, perceptive prattle on here? Between rows of the scarf du jour? The world would be so much worse off, right? Tell me yes. Comment, for the love of God, comment! But I know this much: If I were still writing the way I wrote in graduate school, you'd have stopped reading long before getting to this paragraph. I was in graduate school during the time of the fairy tale: in fairy tales, nothing is real. In addition to the happily-married-based-on-the-illusion-of-security-born-from-another fictive narrative, here's the fairy tale in which I then lived: Once upon a time, in a land across the sea, there was a King of Theory. Like most of that written in French, his work was -- and is -- incomprehensible, even when carefully translated. I know what you're thinking: It's gotta be one of those lost in translation things, right? Right? Hmmm. Maybe. Here's a brief sample, from Grammatology: The science of writing should therefore look for its object at the roots of scientificity. The history of writing should turn back toward the origin of historicity. A science of the possibility of science? A science of science which would no longer have the form of logic but that of grammatics? A history of the possibility of history which would no longer be an archaeology, a philosophy of history or a history of philosophy? And so, for years, little girls got lost in these words. We were little girls, avoiding ourselves, playing with words as if they were Legos, rearranging them endlessly. We were as imprisoned, charged with weaving straw into gold, even though we knew the weird little man's name. We tipped our heads slightly to the right, adopted a thoughtful expression, stuck our pencils behind our ears, and tried to pretend that words are only differance. That's French for ... you guessed it ... difference ... of course loaded with more meaning, even though Derrida would argue that there isn't any meaning at all ... except of course in his writing? I mean, a bit paradoxical, no? I never fully believed this fairy tale, but perhaps because I'd succumbed to the very depressing fallacy that Derrida was -- in the no meaning exists part -- right. I found lots of solace -- or so I thought -- in a number of other fairy tales, too, including escape. Escape from life into the heady world of literary criticism and theory, where nothing can hurt as much as reality can. But since then, I've fallen into the very gritty reality of a different kind of work, the do-gooder type, the windmill-tilting, change the culture, save-my-corner-of-the-world type. Even if just one bit at a time. And I've learned that the aphorism "no good deed goes unpunished" is one of the truest. This morning, in the midst of being told that my colleagues and I were lazy-assed disorganized time-wasters with little sense of urgency, I was faced with what I would have once seen as two options: fight or flight, two words defined only by their difference from one another. The always already. But there is a third option I have been learning in another type of school lately; a third option that one takes step by step, inch by inch, stitch by stitch. Picture the row growing, the weaving of the love that is a handmade scarf. I practiced it. I smiled, pulling joy from my promise to bring joy to others, to tolerate difference/differance. And the patience came. My moment of imbalance passed. I spun joy, and thus meaning, and suddenly that straw became gold.

The Reign of Terror

2010-01-05T21:10:00.000-05:00

It must be significant that the more I've been knitting, the more I've been thinking about Dickens. Despite having read his entire ouevre for my doctoral exams -- yes, even Bleak House and Little Dorrit -- I never knew that Madame Defarge was what was considered a "tricoteuse."

According to our time's ultimate source of knowledge, Wikipedia, "tricoteuse literally translates from the French as a (female) knitter. The term is used to refer to the old women who used to sit around the guillotine knitting during the Reign of Terror in France in the 18th century. Decisions on executions had to be made in public so these women were paid to be in attendance and give their opinion. During the Reign of Terror the opinions were rarely anything but 'off with his head.' In Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities, the character Madame Defarge is a relentless and bloodthirsty tricoteuse ..." Feel free to click on any of those links and end up on Wikipedia, even though doing so may mean you never return to my blog. Perhaps I can figure out a way to get my blog on Wikipedia? Things did not end well for Madame Defarge. The hubris she had to judge and condemn others, even if it was a kinda popular thing to do, participating in the Revolution and quashing the power of the ruling class and all, came back and bit her on her derriere. She was completely unforgiving, and with a vengeance went after the descendants of the Evremonde family, who had, a generation before, wronged her family. She's a tricky one, that Defarge. She knits into her work the names of those she wants to ... and eventually does ... see die. Dickens modeled her on the Fates, who used to measure the lifespan of a human being in a string of yarn. When they wanted to end that life, they would sever the fibers. So very many kinds of friction have frayed the yarn that is my life -- most of which I had a large part in causing. Of course, friction comes in fits and starts, and lately, it's in a fit phase, the kind of time in which the amount of good you do, the quantity of truth or joy you spread, or the volume of love you share, is irrelevant. The Fates will do as they see best. It is the best of times, the worst of times. The best of times in which I have found so many ways to be kind. The worst of times in the ways I am repaid. The best of times, in which there is always another skein. The worst of times, in which I knit feverishly, to reach the next skein, because its fibers have not yet been compromised. Today, a small but memorable moment of my childhood came into mind -- a moment that I've since tried to convince myself made me as nobly intended as Robin Hood. But in fact, that was not the case at all. In fact, it was born of selfishness, and dissatisfaction with my basketful of yarn. You see, I was one of the several children in my second grade who didn't have a new box of crayons. In those days, we had to bring our crayons from home, and because my parents impressed upon my sisters the importance of keeping their things nice, I inherited a box of half-used crayons that had a most disappointing broken magenta, my favorite color. I didn't have any money of my own to buy a new box, and back then, we couldn't -- and didn't -- expect anyone else to provide them for us. I couldn't ask my mother for a new box, because that would be adlmitting that I was ashamed by the perfectly fine box I had. Anyway, there I was one day strolling a few paces behind my mother, who was searching through our local Five And Ten for notepaper. Cleverly, I let the space between us lengthen until I found it safe to lift what I saw as a beautiful, perfect, untouched-by-human-hands box of crayons and put it in my pocket. Immediately, the guilt descended. I was Catholic then, after all. Once home, I carefully stashed the box in my red plaid book satchel, and before we pulled out our brown bag lunches the following day, I retrieved the box and gave it to the little girl at the desk next to me who also didn't have a new box. In fact, she had no box at all. Her toothy grin was like a pardon. It may have been the first time in my life that I felt relief. But not enough to erase what I'd done. Prepare now for a mangled blend of metaphor: Only now do I realize that every step I've ever taken outside my box of perfectly fine crayons has frayed my yarn. Look around. There are so many kids without any crayons at all. We who had even an imperfect box were born lucky. But that imperfect box is enough to make us suspect now, to nudge our necks ever more closely to the guillotine's blade. Our names are written in society's fabric as those who have, as the descendants of those who oppressed the rest. I don't know what the answer is. Capitalism is as imperfect as any other system, and intrinsically demands that a poorer class exist. But since that early lesson, I strove to get, the honest, capitalist way, a nice new magenta crayon -- not only for me, but also for the little kids without one. And now I'm angry that I'm judged for that. A do-gooder who sees the have-nots as the lesser-thans. So, to find peace, and patience, and acceptance, I pick up my size 5 1/2 plastic needles and my black Paton Shetland Chunky acrylic/wool, and seed stitch another couple of rows on the winter scarf meant for my son. I know this entry sounds pious and self-serving. That's the problem with humility. As soon as you find some, you're proud of having done so. Repeat.

Space Suits

2010-01-04T13:23:00.002-05:00

I once knit a pair of socks, one of which would have fit Frankenstein, and the other Bilbo Baggins. I'm thinking the product was affected by my state of mind, especially as everything I knit while pregnant came out properly shaped, with tricky cables or delicate contrasting zigzags. Funny how we glow when we're pregnant, but never attribute that radiance to the fact that we're not smoking and boozing. Of course this theory doesn't explain why our hair falls out post-partum, but I'm working on it.

In December alone, I created four gifts for family and friends through this new industriousness, and miraculously finished a project for my second child that I'd started for my firstborn. No matter how you look at it, this hobby is better than most of the others I have acquired over the years. I have yet to figure out how to play a Brahms Rhapsodie while twisting a cable, but my children assure me that's a good thing.

So whom should I honor with this daily blog, to whom I would happily dedicate 2010, a year I once thought would find us flying around in pods wearing jumpsuits made of Kevlar and shiny astronaut fashion? Shall research it tonight. Hell, maybe I'll design a signature hand-knit space suit. As I see it, I've found contented and chaos-free row-by-row living. Let's see what the recipients of my fine creations have to say to all that. And let's see what knit one, purl one living brings in practice.

I swear, like a new mother breastfeeding in a public place, I am not embarking on this madness just to needle you.

Winter to spring

2010-01-01T16:11:00.001-05:00

Days pass
like unwrapped gifts
or delicate negligees
kept in the drawer

The year turns with songs
we do not understand
and candles never lit

What of sitting silently
inhaling the fragrance
of a dark pine

Feeling the pungent
needle carpet
softened by time

Seeing through narrowed eyes
the filtered glow
through the branches and
tasting the whisper
of each other's breath

The Law of Unintended Consequences

2009-10-09T12:53:00.001-04:00

A patchwork of forgotten hours, gray squares next to deep rich red. He’s barely stitched together, now, but the squares will merge to make one glorious pattern woven of the many ways he first killed more than his choices, and then rediscovered the colors of his life. In one corner of the fabric is woven a dreadful error – it’s handmade, like a Persian rug, and the inconsistencies prove it. It’s a cluster of stars and garish lights against the dark, a constellation of confusion, the black border between before and after. Now asking every morning for forgiveness, he pulls the quilt up high beneath his chin, knowing we’re all guiltier than we’d like to think, and that staying under cover doesn’t help. And so he rises to greet the unknown of the day. Note: Dedicated to a humble young man who teaches others how important it is to own our own stuff.

Lost in Translation

2009-10-09T12:28:00.000-04:00

We’re running out of metaphors. For night, black, darkness— caliginosity is a synonym, but oh, so nonpoetic. God forbid you try a flower or a storm, even if you get specific. Oh, it’s all been done. Try translating from another language, when the right phrase can't be said. Personal pain is trite, and insignificant compared to that of others. C’mon, there was a Holocaust, and genocide’s not dead. American kids go hungry. All we can search for is a better word for hope. There are only eight notes in a scale, and they’ve all been played. Is there a term for slowing our rhythm to one minute at a time? By Lisa E. Paige © 2009 When writing this poem I thought of teenage angst, my Philosophy of the Mind course in college, and The Anxiety of Influence, by Harold Bloom. I recently read a poem in The Atlantic that directly refered to four great American poets -- no subtle allusions, even. Everyone writes one like that, and I did, once, too. A poet has to let go of feeling unoriginal, or will never write one word.

In Poland

2009-09-29T19:45:00.000-04:00

I have been seeking the answers to the same questions for about 35 years, or since I was finishing up at Harvard, and being told by my self-important professor that my idea for my thesis wasn't good enough ... seeking the answer to why some did, and why some didn't, why some fell in step, and why some resisted, why some surrendered, and why others fought ... just didn't interest the guy. I guess I was in the wrong department, probably belonged in philosophy. And of course no answer exists, but it's still interesting to pursue what's there in the history of it all, no? Oh, well. Anyway these questions have haunted me since. I had to go there to find out I was asking the wrong questions. And I still feel unqualified either to ask the questions or comment on any of it, frankly, at all. But hey, 35 years ... I am determined to share the words, as humble as they may be. Here goes. In Poland In Oswiecim The air is thick With why it’s not my story. Yet I’ve come so far To find out how, And why. So long I’ve sought Those answers. How some could, How others couldn’t. Why some surrendered, Others fought. Some swallowed hate, Others poison, And still others silence. All of them, They hover here And like the dust Cling to my clogs. Ashes echo across The flaming August sky Like the ghostly trail behind a jet; But I'm deaf as mud. Hunger rises, But no answers. Then I see. Cornflowers would do well here If not for soil That’s steeped in sorrow. Lisa E. Paige, © 2009

Seasons

2009-09-21T14:59:00.000-04:00

In the forest He made a garden And there she grew. The house he built there Was the second one With walls for warmth And windows through which She could safely watch The wilderness. The first house traveled with him. In his arms She dreamed of rainbows. The harshest wind was just a lullaby. But slowly She added lyrics And now her song Is the melody he hears. On the new bare walls He sees her hues: The bold strokes of autumn Like leaves gone golden, The yellow tint to honey that is Just like sticky summer heat, Dazzling vermilion Like her heart. She wants serenity In moss-like green But ahead lies the waking Glow of sunrise – Roses and oranges bursting Open like her future. So much nears completion. Now through his fingers Pass the rushing blues Of soft cascading waterfalls. She wouldn’t want it, but If he could, would he reverse The current that Carries all downstream? Lisa E. Paige © September 2009

Virtual Namedropping and Other 21st Century Sins

2009-07-21T21:34:00.000-04:00

Ahh, Vanity, thy name is Facebook. Narcissus never would have made it out after his first log on. He'd still be snapping new profile pictures to be sure he gets the absolute best angle. But don't judge. Facebook brings out the worst in all of us. Before the advent of the blog and social networking, our temptation to self-aggrandize was only satisfied in small groups, unless that is we were lucky enough to have a weekly column, or perhaps a magazine named after ourselves. But on Facebook, it's made simple and global. Follow these steps. If you are female: Get a glam shot done to use as your profile pic. Make sure you are heavily made up and wearing something appropriately avant garde but not too revealing. If you are male: Lean into the screen and let the computer capture your best side; don't shave beforehand; be sure you are only half-smiling so as to look as enigmatic as possible. Friend some random person who actually does have some decent name-recognition -- it helps if somehow you once met this person for longer than 10 seconds, but whatever -- and is so busy he or she doesn't have time to discriminate. Suddenly you're publicly best friends with the stars, rocketed to Social Status Extraordinaire. Mention obliquely that you're visiting a person, whose name you've agreed never to disclose, at his estate in Beverly Hills. The following week post that you're in a chateau outside Cannes. Once this takes on, develop your knowledge of commonly used foreign phrases, and start using them to open your posts. Friend one person with a foreign name at least each day. If you don't know anyone from a particular hotspot, make him or her up. Easy enough to do. Create a gmail account, for example, for someone named Jean-Pierre Renaud from Marseilles, download a photo of an anonymous model, and you're good to go. To show up those drones who post inanities about the weather and the recent quizzes they completed, even on your real friends' pages, and without being censured, post a quotation from Eliot's Four Quartets. Make it an obscure one. Follow it up several days later with one from Virginia Woolf. Never fall prey to the impulse to use the smiley icon. Okay, last: Post photographs of yourself in these hotspots, with recognizable celebrities in the background. Photoshop works extremely well for this step. Now you are well established, and your friend list has grown to at least 1,000. If you do not have complete strangers friending you at this point because they want to be associated with you, I will eat this post. What I haven't told you is that your real problems are only now beginning. Suddenly long-lost feuding relatives resurface from their hiding places in Pocatello and Biloxi only to expose your childhood secrets and insult one another through comments on your high-end posts. You could defriend them. It's an option. But venturing into the Defriend is a dangerous step. There are plenty of acceptable reasons to defriend even a dear friend: poor grammar or spelling for example -- cannot have that on your wall, really. Or he or she posts links to Ann Coulter's latest commentary. Or they are wall-writers, the FB equivalent of a dog who lifts his leg on a bush to mark the territory, a guy who leaves his toothbrush and razor on your vanity, or a woman who hangs her nightie on your bedpost. Or even worse: They show up too often, "liking" your status, making sweet little offsides that show you've been stringing them along while you decide which of these new 1,000 close friends you're going to date. He or she is ruining your chances with the dozens of other men/women you've been courting online! Or worst: You can't get online without being assaulted by 10 to 20 instant messaging boxes competing for your attention. All that beautiful anonymity you've crafted! For what? And then the ultimate horror happens to you. How can that be? That hot chick or steamy devil in Amsterdam DFs you. You remember ... maybe you shouldn't have quoted The Exorcist under the photo of your high school girlfriend/boyfriend ... he/she could be sending messages directly to the hottest ones on your list ... he/she could be telling the ... no ... it can't be ... the TRUTH. Your voyeuristic pleasures are now diminishing rapidy, as you are now the one being outed globally. You feel yourself sinking into a deep depression. Damn. As the word travels through cyberspace, you're exposed for having exploited the names of people you hardly knew 20 years ago, and didn't much like even then. Karma descends. Your friend list is shrinking rapidly as your FB friends flee. Don't panic. There is still one strategy available to you: Go dark. Easy to do. Here are two options: a) Post that you're in St. Petersburg visiting Svetlana/Ivan. Don't forget to alter your voicemail greeting claims, should you have shared your number with anyone (not recommended, but it could have happened). b) Go MIA, unannounced, for several days. This behavior is guaranteed to increase your popularity. Those people still deluded about your social stature will miss you so much that when you return you'll be greeted by a flurry of comments and status likes. You can return to the original steps above and start building a new posse/harem. There are plenty of fine feathered birds in the trees. Be aware that the Surgeon General as determined that FB is hazardous to your health. Documented cases include actual accomplished professionals destroyed by insomnia and international financiers who have cancelled all important conference calls while glued to FB Chat. You may be popular online, but your life has become reduced to you and that blazing, brilliant, highly lit screen, the star of your universe, the light of your life. Your eyes glow and your pupils are permanently dilated. You start imagining you are the Count of Monte Cristo. Where can you start digging with your spoon ... One last warning. If you by any chance do look like Daniel Craig or Sandra Bullock, friending others carries a very serious responsibility. Should you pull back, or worse, defriend one of them, you will cause a descent in their human value relative to the decline in the number of your posts. That's just cruel. One benefit? It's a great way to test your friendships. One day, change your profile pic to reflect that you've just been a victim of a serious fire, and now have facial scarring that will last a lifetime. Quickly, you'll find out, one by one, if your friends actually love you for you. And copyright your posts. I have lots more to say, but I only share so much information with those who are not my FB friends.

The South

2009-07-19T08:35:00.000-04:00

I wasn't a Yankee, being of Russian decent, despite my patriotism being as passionate as that of the "Founding Fathers," and perhaps even more so than the D.A.R., as my family is eternally grateful for being welcomed as they ran from the Bolsheviks who would have taken all that they'd worked for, even their lives. Neither male (too compassionate) nor female (too assertive) by social definition of gender, I have never fit, and never trusted those who want to. They try so hard, and lose themselves in the process. An intellectual reading Christa Wolf in the German while sitting by the side of a country club pool. A Red Sox fan in New York. A townie at Harvard. In Waltham, someone from the wrong side of the tracks -- a South Sider out to prove the rest of town that no one is defined by origin. A child living in my father's garden in a neighborhood that paved over its lawns. A cyclist and pedestrian in a world of cars. A runner, but slow. A believer in the innate goodness of Germans and all they can teach us ("Wo man Buecher brennt ..."). A middle class Caucasian advocate of African American students living in poverty. I don't attempt to assimilate anymore, unlike my father, who refused to speak Russian, but much like my aunts, I am proud of my heritage -- my difference. It's not pride in the sinful sense, but the same kind of pride that inspires Gay Pride parades. Those who don't fit distrust those who seem to, as I do the smiling faces of the South. But on my recent trip to Charlottesville, VA and Durham, NC, I found myself softening in the gentleness of even the A-est of types. At Duke, the peace was audible, tangible, soothing. No one was trying to prove anything -- the South already did, and they were defeated, just like the Wehrmacht. They were humbled, they fell to their knees; like those of us who have fallen in life, like Adam and Eve, they had to accept defeat before they could achieve heavenly peace. Duke tried to change Princeton, and failed. So he founded his own school, then invited Northerners to attend. Brilliant. This Ivy of the South has a very large number of students from the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states. Also, it is neither a campus nor a wildnerness, but both. Difference there is celebrated without competition, as the great literary theorists argue is inherent in our language. And they all stand behind the Blue Devils. The Yankees were right: Working together, we can change the world. They were also wrong: It is not only by joint effort but also through trust and understanding that this peace can be born. The South There is a sweet welcome in Southern air, though Yankees resist it. The softness of the breeze in Sarah's gardens smiles like good manners. Crape myrtle seduces; the breeze, scented, intoxicates. This weather doesn't change like New England's.

Gifts

2009-07-05T13:39:00.000-04:00

This morning heard a marvelous sermon by the minister of Second City Church in Harrisburg (Third and Verbeke, and no, it has nothing to do with Saturday Night Live, although said mininster, Jed, is often seen in sneakers while preaching). He spoke about how Paul did not thank the Phillipeans for their gift of money when he was in need. Instead, he told them they had been kind. A gift is indeed an act of kindness and generosity offered up to God (or the Universe if God is a word that frightens you) and is a gift of ourselves that expects no return. Whether it's money, something tangible, or something you offer of yourself through time or effort or even creativity, it's a gift honoring the ultimate gift that Christianity teaches us to give. Giving Reaching out by hand is a physical manifestation of affection. My children often rejected my hand to prove their independence. Extending your hand to an adult is rife with risk. It's baring your heart. It's feeling floating thickly, hovering in air. What does it mean for that kind of gift not to be taken? Is it still received? Perhaps in a way that in the moment the giver and receiver both think not possible? A daisy blossoms. A bird sings. These things are gifts. But what of poetry? Just lines of words. No roses. Just anagrams laid out upon the table. Rearranged, they are my hand reaching out again, like a blossom or a song.

Children's Stories

2009-06-28T23:56:00.000-04:00

We read fairy tales to children To teach them to be careful. We tell stories to each other Because we can be nothing but. Charlotte's fragile web Made others see greatness Where no one had before. She didn't have to lie To make us all love Wilbur. So arachnids all We too weave our artless webs. Make them simple words Of simpler truth. Our time on earth, like Charlotte's Is so short. Be not so careful That you do not speak. How would Charlotte Have felt dying If she had never written Wilbur?

Pearls

2009-06-08T22:14:00.000-04:00

once again i have words they are like Mallorcan pearls which are easily left behind but their sheen not forgotten

Just Keep Swimming

2009-06-02T16:45:00.000-04:00

Yes, I am still alive ... have been slaving to produce the First Ever Harrisburg Public School Foundation (HPSF) GALA -- me, an event planner? Egad! Yet with the help of Takia Colston, Bradley Krow, Joyce Davis, and Stephanie Kalina-Metzger, it is going to be a huge success, with many announcements of merit, a speech by Mayor Reed, remarks by Allison Keyes of NPR/Good Morning America/World News Tonight, and presentations to deserving students, teachers, donors, and volunteers. I'm very excited. Yesterday, however, was spent fuming over an editorial in The Patriot-News that you can read at this link: http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2009/06/regions_students_need_to_do_be.html A diploma is a diploma is a diploma is evidently not true to these writers, who haven't of course set foot in a Harrisburg School District School since 1991 ... if at all. I went to a large public school in a relatively urban middle to lower class suburb of Boston. Did I have the best preparation for college? Certainly not. My daughter went to a private school right here in Harrisburg. Did she have the best preparation for college? Certainly. And it cost us. The editors challenge us to do more -- what more can be done except on a better budget? We need the community to support what the District is doing on a shoestring. Check out how much is spent per pupil in the top school districts in the country, where children are already enriched daily by families who have the means to do so. It makes me mad. There is no more a level playing field in education today as there was in 1865 or in 1965. The myth needs to be dispelled. And those who are struggling to level that field should be commended. Ahem. Thanks, Mayor Reed. Thanks, Gerald W. Kohn. Thanks, Harrisburg teachers. Thanks, donors like Derek Hathaway, Penn National Insurance, Giant Foods, Commerce Bank, PHFA, Highmark, WITF, NPR, UPS, M&T Bank, Members 1st, and all the members of the HPSF Board of Directors. Just thanks. Yet, I still had that rotten taste in my mouth. Our students were bashed. And they're all our students. So, I submitted the following today. And consequently felt somewhat better. But not completely better. That will take a while. And some good reporting on what's really going on, and why Harrisburg School District administration, teachers, and students don't get nearly the credit they deserve, whereas hatchet women like Michelle Rhee blame the teachers for not knowing what they've never been taught and then, smiling a self-satisfied corporate cat-grin, she poses on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. Fired a bunch of teachers, yep! That'll fix it all. The secret, which really isn't one: Work with the dedicated people you have to help them do what they have always hoped to do. Help the children want to learn. Lift them up, don't beat them down. June 2, 2009 Dear Editor: As Executive Director of the Harrisburg Public School Foundation (HPSF), I’m responding to your recent op-ed on the Harrisburg School District and its so-called failure to improve PSSA scores. In fact, when the Mayor took over the District, only 11 percent of the students were passing, and the District at that time had 7,000 students. As of last year, 28 percent of the students scored “proficient” and above, and another 22 percent “basic” – both of which categories are passing according to most states – and the District now has 9,000 students. For the first time, last year, fewer than 50 percent of the students scored “below basic.” While this result is still not satisfactory to teachers, District Administration, or the Mayor, it is solid progress that all involved parties are building upon in hopes of accelerating improvement. Parents and teachers know that A Child Is More Than A Test Score. Any reader interested in seeing everything first hand should call me – I’ll give you a tour. I have never seen teachers and administrators who are so dedicated and passionate about learning and their students. Otherwise I wouldn’t work to raise funds and build partnerships to help the District provide what the students need. Instead of tearing down the accomplishments of the students just before graduation, how about commending them for their resilience and determination? Also, you state that more must be done. What, exactly, beyond the intense efforts of all concerned, can be done, beyond more involvement from the community? That’s what the HPSF encourages. Visit http://www.hbgpsf.org/ for more information. Blog readers: Thanks for looking. I hope it meant something to you.

Legacy

2009-05-19T00:04:00.001-04:00

it is midnight and quiet here though 400 miles away in Cambridge, Mass., a police line crosses an ivy-covered gate and is tightly wrapped around my daughter's peace fear where yesterday lived freedom shots where yesterday lived shouts danger where yesterday lived blissful blissful blissful oblivion thereof that lovely long lost belief that life will never end for me or anyone i love or even know casually yes i remember that and spring in new england the reward for waking up for class in winter Ben and Jerry's as we walked bouquets bursting umbrellas left behind a long bike ride to Walden Pond the regret of procrastination the only thing cordoned off the grass so it would grow in thickly like the notes we'd written in our spiralbounds the courtyards full of young lovers and friends lying close to one another heads on one anothers' laps books propped open some unread some dog-eared the worst to happen a lousy final grade our national naivete is obsolete again 9/11 pounds in my heart another tower crashes and yet this is just one victim or is that so? how many students must be slain before we know that guns indeed kill children all that is evil is too close to mine and to yours always has been a cloud passes across the sun she reaches for her cardigan the young lovers who were studying or not go inside it's not even safe in there no matter how comforting his arms how will she stay warm what will she dream how can i sleep i love her so she is my breath why isn't that enough to keep her alive unhurt forever?

May 12th is National Limerick Day!

2009-05-12T23:40:00.000-04:00

Thank heavens for Dick Strawser, limericist extraordinaire (music assists with poetic meter, of course) for reminding us all that today is National Limerick Day! And I hadn't written one yet! But better to be late to write a limerick than to be a late limerick writer. Now lame, can't help with that ... (b)lame the form. Of American Idol I tire It drags us all into the mire Chris, Adam, or Gokey, It's all just so hokey, Though fodder for easy satire.

America Idle

2009-05-12T20:36:00.000-04:00

Ryan Seacrest announced tonight that American Idol sponsor Exxon Mobil supported a trip to send Carrie Underwood to Africa to deliver mosquito nets to poor children. The audience cheered mindlessly: Ahh, such model corporate citizens. In 2007, the company blew away all prior records set by greedy corporations, making $1,300 per second, which translates into $10.25 billion for the year. And we are entertained. We sit on our sofas And watch them compete Like Simon we chime in And picture defeat It’s easy to find fault With notes sharp or flat With poor fashion choices Too skinny, too fat It’s up to the voters Which amateur wins Is vaulted to stardom His new life begins We wish we could be him We wish we could sing But we sit on our sofas And don’t do a thing. May 12, 2009

Regret

2009-05-12T07:49:00.000-04:00

Looking at the horizon I see clouds Thunder Hail Instead of going indoors I head right for it The cloudburst Is cold Like my choice

Harvard Buys Yankees

2009-05-11T11:15:00.000-04:00

(Cambridge, MA, May 11) -- In a surprise move, earlier today President Drew Faust of Harvard University announced that the Harvard Board of Overseers voted in a special meeting this weekend that Harvard will be purchasing the New York Yankees. "It's unfortunate that we'll be investing in the Yankees, despite our own origin in Yankee culture and regular presence in Yankee Magazine," Faust said. "However, we must abide by the vote of the Board of Overseers. With this huge expense in store, we'll be discontinuing the Harvard Athletics Program to compensate. After this year's stock market mishaps, and because a large portion of our Endowment was invested with Bernie Madoff, the budget simply couldn't handle both." Stipulations of the purchase, negotiated by Goldman, Sachs & Co., are that if The New York Times closes The Boston Globe, Harvard will suspend the remainder of the 2009 Yankee season. Furthermore, the Yankees are required to purchase Manny Ramirez's contract and Johnny Damon will be benched until 2010. Red Sox manager Terry Francona said: "I have already been in touch with George Steinbrenner concerning Harvard's purchase and its stipulations. It was a very unpleasant call." Steinbrenner refused to respond to repeated phone calls from The Globe. "He did agree to suspend the broadcasting of 'Sweet Caroline' during games, however," added Francona. Regarding the poor performance of the Yankees against the Red Sox so far this year, rumors abound that several Harvard students buried a baseball last used by Tim Wakefield under the new Yankee Stadium pitcher's mound. This rumor has not been confirmed. Dewey Machalot, Managing Partner of Goldman Sachs, Inc., said, "Additional rumors about Harvard purchasing Yale are untrue. They did consider it, but Yale's asking price was much too high. It was in the hundreds of thousands." "We would consider purchasing a better university," said Faust.

This Just In

2009-05-10T08:58:00.000-04:00

Newspapers closing around the globe are reporting that the Red Sox are demanding concessions from the Yankees. (Didn't Yankees found the Red Sox? So confusing, I don't get it ... I've been insulted by Dixie Chicks for being a Yankee -- even while wearing red socks -- one in particular --you know who you are -- called me YANKEE -- for not understanding why she would fry chicken in the morning.) What concessions, what? They are not devastating to the labor class. That they cease playing "Sweet Caroline" on their loud speakers, that Derek Jeter stop strutting, at least when in Massachusetts. That certain outfielders who defected to NYC from better teams and more pleasant places and historic parks that haven't been abandoned like old gloves be allowed to grow their hair so long again that it obscures their clearly faulty vision. Without these concessions, reports are stating, the Red Sox will be forced to close the Yankees. That would be a shame. May 2009

Mother Earth Gave Us Birth

2009-05-10T08:14:00.001-04:00

The limerick, a much underappreciated form, especially in Gender Studies, is available for constant self-amusement, and one my sister Dr. Christine V. Paige and I use as a regular form of conversation and written communication. She is better at it than I; it is perhaps the only thing, other than dentistry, sewing, close harmony vocalizing, performance arts, general niceness, and horsewomanship, at which she dominates in the never-ending battle for Sibling Superiority. As you can see I have lots of trouble acknowledging her talents. I invite you to contribute. Our editors shall review and post the worthy. Mother's Day 2009 I awakened one day with a shock To realize I'd birthed a whole flock Why don't they at college Provide us the knowledge That children your whole life will rock?

The Sonnet

2009-05-03T15:56:00.000-04:00

Since college years, I have not attempted a sonnet. I've recently determined to reinvestigate form as I've become intrigued with its implications in all aspects of living, from the artistic to the mundane. I've found that within form, I've found joy ... the confines are exquisitely freeing and connect me to the masters. The below is something I've worked on for several months. Like Shakespeare's Dark Lady, the subject is elusive ... and that's because he's every good divorced (or no longer in long-term relationship) man I've met over the past 10 years, so many of whom are my dear friends. Women in Harrisburg whine that there are no good men. It's untrue. They are ubiquitous. The problem is that they've been as wounded as have we good women. It takes a long time to be willing to open up again after having been told for years that you are unworthy. Men have a hard time saying that -- playing the victim is counter to masculinity as defined by American (and perhaps worldwide) societal expectations. But if you look closely, you will find them. Befriend them. They need us. Gentlemen Is his kind life one touched by longing still Or a still life that seeks no love of yore? A glass that is by rising tide half-filled or gardens as from drought thirsty for more? His eyes like windows all his passions show -- Of vision, caring, steadiness he's made. His smiling heart by beauty ever pleased Though love, for peace, has been the price he's paid. No light like his should ever go unknown In nights of blackness it will pierce the sky Though starved for tender recognition gone He never has forgotten its delight. Dreams waken him with silent blinding fear And friendship quiets all his unshed tears. Copyrighted material

For Hilda

2009-03-08T14:47:00.000-04:00

Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier

preceded Beethoven's Apassionata

and Mozart carefully but barely contained madness

In just a trill, it seemed, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

evolved into discordant cries of torment

and eerie screams for breath.

If you visit Berlin go to the Bebelplatz and you will read

Heinrich Heine's 1821 prescient verse that

"Dort, wo man Buecher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen."

Had I not read those first awkward textbook conversations

in teenaged self-consciousness and curiosity, "Ich spiele gerne Schach,"

how would I have grown to understand those chilling lines?

(They translate, roughly, as,

Where men burn books

in the end they also will burn people.)

The Bibliothek at Bebelplatz lies underground,

under Unter den Linden, and its hollow space

is filled wih empty bookshelves defying Marx -- G-d is not dead.

There hover oh so many unwritten, end-jambed poems,

hopes that exploded into shards

like shop windows and human trust on Kristallnacht.

Today glass towers rise even in far-off Boston, in the land

that would not take the broken souls despite the words that

circle her proud lady's feet in the New York harbor.

In Berlin, just off the Ku-damm, where burlesque and Eiscafe still co-exist,

and gaps between the buildings shudder in the winter wind

stands the Kaiserwilhemskirche, stretching skyward, unrepaired, a bombed-out Gedaechtnis.

Novalis, in his Hymns to the Night, wrote that in daylight

he lived his faith but in the night he died in fire.

But to him, it was a lost romance -- he kept his life.

How can one explain it? It's drawn me to the language and the land

for a lifetime. But one who lost her father, mother, brother, all, said she believed

her father when he said, "An educated people wouldn't do that."

That? That unspeakable "that," which the rumors whispered,

the boots struck, the dogs barked, the guns rang out,

and the chimneys spouted.

Despite it all, for her, night once again turned into day,

just like grass again grows where her feet once shuffled.

She awakens daily celebrating bread and water in her kitchen.

But when they, like she, who never forgot how to love, or how to teach us,

have at last left us behind, who will remind the next that, like in Grimm,

the human wolf is always at the door?

It's so simple, really.

His icy breath blows down our own houses,

howling its never-ending untruth:

If they don't go, if they don't go,

it will be we, it will be we

who'll ride the rails to ashes.

Lisa E. Paige

March, 2009

Copyrighted material

Valentine's Day for the Dodo Bird

2009-02-09T14:19:00.000-05:00

Have you ever seen a peacock spread his tail feathers? Poor peahen has no chance. You might not think of turkeys as quite so … appealing, off the platter. But the male – called a gobbler, or a Tom – must have something going for him. He’s polygamous. That’s a euphemism, like for Saudis, whose cloaked and covered women outnumber even the camels that were their price. Toms strut in pairs and they can change the colors of their heads. Plus their wattles can enlarge. You can see why they will score. Now how about the falcon? Every year, the assignation at his and his mate’s urban aerie. Same time next year. All that flapping, like Leda with her swan. Could they be celebrating that they’re not extinct? But hey, at least he helps her incubate the eggs. Not at night, though. Then he hunts. So what of men – are they not birds of prey? The rule imposed on the poor fellows, Western, anyhow, is monogamy, which of course goes contrary to their nature. Like turkeys, Americanus Commonus struts in pairs, only hoping for a harem (unless he’s Mormon). Most heads have just one color hair – that is, if they’ve got any. And he’s gotta have a wing man, who will take one for the flock. In the human species, the man’s wallet the label on his jacket the table he can get the Porsche or Audi and the way he knows the somalier are important. But it’s the Western woman’s job to let real finery burst forth. Oh, the plumped and glossy lips. The collagen, push-up silky bras, satin vaginal floss. The mani-pedis, hair foils, tweezing, waxing, micro-dermabrasion, white-meat implants. Oh, the fishnets that we cast. And the stilettos, from which we just as surely gracelessly will stumble as from our self-esteem. For what? A dozen roses once a year? And protestations Hallmark bought from two-bit writers trained by afternoon TV? Or worse, the ever-popular post-coital “I love you”? (Which we all know really means, ’cause Harry told us, “Oh shit, how long before I can get out of here?” Or worse, “I’m gonna chew my arm off now.”) Under all these inhuman behaviors hides the lonely human. Hungry to be seen, heard, held. Men and women both. I know this, because I have a son. Maybe it’s not the lack of feathers, but the beating of the human heart that distinguishes man from vulture, and all the rest of nature, too. Sex isn’t love, mate, unless the love precedes the mating. So look, guys, don’t send her flowers on V-Day. (Oh, any other time is fine.) And women, hope for this: That they clothe themselves in goatskins, light a bonfire, fan it, let it flame into the night sky, harness the winds, name a star for you. And if either of you writes a poem, please remember: It’s the content, not the form. Lisa E. Paige February 2009 Copyrighted material

The Masters

2009-01-03T10:30:00.000-05:00

The artist saw in her

all the colors he

could ever paint,

but she saw azure freedom

blazing o'er his shoulder.

Another's slippers

tapped out quarter notes

and triplets, dipping to

her partner in the waltz,

smiling, with a curtsy.

Yet another photographed

the world in black and white

to mimic his bleak inner landscape.

When she felt his cold contrasts

she wrapped herself

in shadow both for warmth and

to avoid the lens.

Like us, the pigment fades.

The gloves are wrapped in tissue.

Where is the hope

of tasting the sweet longing

of another, or of healing

someone's broken wing?

Oh, a few play jazzy sevenths

echoing the discord

between Vermeer and his young subject

painting her so bright that

the girl is not diminished

but immortal made,

and the moment, too.

How can we join the masters,

let our rhythm burst forth blindly

from our brushes,

close the shutter

against the driving rain,

awaken pulsing in the catwings

of every foggy morning

like dawn never came before?

Dear Abby

2008-12-18T16:44:00.000-05:00

The fire smolders in the wood stove illuminating the bound letters of Abigail Adams on my lap. She penned these daily to her husband John who spent years among Parisians while she weathered winters and Revolutions American and other. Six years of letters, nary a sonnet nor an ode, yet she quoted Milton and Shakespeare like a child playing Für Elise from memory. She called him Lysander, her friend, as friends indeed it all commenced, and later correspondents were. She wrote so many more letters than did he, like today’s friend who cannot help herself from emailing thoughts as soon as they occur, untempered by any lack of response. Despite their early prim ardor, the letters feel platonic. No heaving bosoms, no Gothic castles’ secret stairways like in the romance genre of the time, so like today’s except in what then went unsaid. She wrote as if walled away behind brick upon brick of battles and politics and miles of Atlantic. Proximity would have prevented that – but then – the best we’d have of her would be a few stray invitations, or thank you notes, assuming even those survived. How is it that Jane Austen, then just a girl in Chawton wrote characters like Abigail, and even lived like her the days of parched habits and nights that led to solitary wakings. A sea apart, they pined patiently for passion while patriarchy and patriotism alike quieted their pulse. Yet Jane wrote satirically of insincerity and imagined answers to all lack. Was John a Mr. Knightley? The older, kinder, safer choice? Sometimes months passed between the sailing of ships carrying letters writer to reader, wife to husband. The news was old before it got there, and she too early born to have read Wollstonecraft, Fuller, Dickinson, Chopin, Woolf. She had no women’s lines to cite, no styles to imitate, to unbind her mind. (Yet Abigail put no stones in her pockets.) Unlike these activist authors she never broke convention, but to her husband dutifully wrote, and wrote, and wrote. My fire’s burning low. So many centuries of dying embers. So many women waiting for their heroes to appear from the hunt, the war, from exploration or conquests unimaginable from beside the hearth. Perhaps more than once she crumpled a blotted page for kindling. So I toss my first rough version of this poem among the coals and rise to get a log. This I can do. I see her in her gown, laying her quill upon the desk beside the inkpot, folding the letter, carefully sealing it shut with melted wax. I lift my ballpoint pen and reach for a clean sheet, more sustaining even in its near weightlessness than an email. As I wait now not for heroes but for words to come, I hear the water outside rushing madly, wearing down the banks of summer’s peaceful wandering stream. The wind rattles windowpanes, wailing wildly, then whispering, return, return, return. Lisa E. Paige Copyrighted Material 2008

Blurds

2008-12-12T11:41:00.000-05:00

Clearly unintentional spoonerisms and newly coined words are plentiful in this Great Age of Misspeak. But my followers (that sounds so like sycophants, but I assure you is not -- more my friends who are devilled by my alternating obliqueness and transparency) are requesting space on this otherwise so serious-minded blog to encourage readers to create and submit some that are both intentional and humorous. Note: Verbifying is strictly verboten (such hideous affronts to the language as the recent, "It's time to progress this country" come to mind). Some examples beyond "blog" to get you going: One of my family's favorite spoonerisms at home arose from years of squabbles among the children about whose turn it was to take on the nasty task of cleaning up after kitty. The end result: "It's your turn to clean the bat cox." Then there's the "portmanteau" word made famous by Lewis Carroll, such as "chortle," a combo of chuckle and snort. The persistent among us can actually introduce these words into the vernacular and experience great pride as they take hold. Although not my invention, I experienced delight many years ago in adding "frust" to my family's vocabulary (Definition: that annoying line of dust that you can't get into the dustpan with the brush). These well-blended words of course deserve a term of their own, hence the title of today's post. So, I challenge you to submit your suggestions by entering your brilliant spoonerisms or portmanteaus (and definitions!) as comments. An objective committee with vast linguistic knowledge and sharp wit will determine which will get posted. Due to the celebrity status of this committee, I am unable to share their names publicly. Keep in mind that whereas there is no requirement that these clever coinages be either scatological or ribald, neither is discouraged. To get you started, here is one born yesterday and deemed acceptable: Lamentainment: n. Story of one's life that is so absurdly pathetic and/or self-pitying that it makes others amused. Usage: Ron's repetitive recounting of his recent rejection provided lamentainment for his relations. (Note: Alliteration not required in definition) Related terms: Seflamentainment, exlamentainment (the former being sefexplantory and the latter close in meaning to the German Schadenfreude, but limited to the spontaneous if non-karmic laughter resulting from being privy to gossip re. the sufferings of one's ex-boy- or girlfriend, spouse, co-worker, or boss.) Reminder: to be considered, these blurds must be original and creative. Under no circumstances will you get away with either Bidenizing (yikes! I verbed!) or simple-mindedly gluing a string of words together as if you were a bureaucrat from Berlin. p.s. Please let me know if you want credit, by name or pseudonym (specified), for your submission.

Orecchio

2008-12-09T14:10:00.000-05:00

You are a mushroom, but not just any old fungus. The kind that, in Italian, is called Orecchio, which means ear. It’s because you look like one – a human one, that is. Yes, human, yet wild, and proud of both. But you’re not the kind of mushroom to preen under harsh fluorescent lighting in an organic supermarket aisle between 12 types of tofu and bread so wholesome that it tastes like bark. No. You are a ruffle on a courtesan’s neck, though leathery, and only casually adorning the dark side of a tree. Still, you are so powerful that forest animals both large and small fear you. You try to keep it quiet that you are dependent on that tree. It’s not weakness, no! You’re intertwined with other life! Oh, how you two together thrive despite the many menaces out there. You’ve learned you share your forest with a certain stealthy someone – another survivor of so much hazardous wasted talk that his ears have grown so fine-tuned he can detect the fairy footfall of a fawn behind the quiet rustle of autumn. He wouldn’t believe that you have oftentimes detected his expert hunter’s feet, nearly soundless on your carpet of pine needles. He approaches. You recognize him, but wonder: Is he friend or foe? Suddenly, unceremoniously, he slices you from all you’ve known, deposits you with some loose screws, a bottle cap, and other random effluvia that have found their way into his jacket pocket. It’s only fitting. He’s been outed; now you have, too. And you thought you were so well hidden there, in the early winter light so dim it may as well be night. The next time you see anything you’re tossed onto a counter, trimmed, washed, and shoved to the edge of a cold stainless steel vessel. You have no way to fight it. But would you if you could? It takes some humans a lifetime to know what you learned in a summer. You accept. You submit. You don’t take it personally. It is all you have been given, it is all you have to give. It has to be enough. For in the end, those who would have sniffed at you as dull, dangerous, or even deadly, will never taste your texture, never see the beauty of your lying there exposed, exotic, wet and shiny against the unmoved sink – sacrificed for flavors that are so much more complex than brown or gray alone – never run a fingertip along your sheen of tussah silk. Lisa E. Paige Copyrighted material, December 2008

Flying Lessons

2008-12-02T08:17:00.000-05:00

The door slides open to an azure world. Loose strands of fear hang from my jump suit. A rush of empty space and drop in pressure blast my thoughts right open. Teetering on the edge between new birth and death, once sure I could only jump in tandem, I glance timidly, surreptitiously at the pilot. His slow smile says Close your eyes and leap. Several seconds later, I am floating, not falling, my eyes open to the miracle of all I can see. That’s when I shrug off my harness which plummets to the earth like the crutches of the healed, and for the first time, I believe. Dear sweet Jesus, Mother Mary, so it is like the story goes. What a surprise that in the end we all have the power to defy gravity. Lisa E. Paige Copyrighted material December 2008

Singular Growth

2008-11-24T09:25:00.000-05:00

Last summer I watched a petunia grow. As a rule I don’t even like petunias. Oh, sure, other people’s petunias are fine. But mine get leggy and when I pinch them back they leave an unpleasant odor of musty death on my fingers. But this wasn’t my petunia. I never even watered it. Neither was it anyone else’s. It appeared between two bricks on the sidewalk in front of my neighbor Betsy’s house nearly shocking her like that postcard from Versailles from a friend with cancer who never made it back from France. The petunia’s life was simple. It grew a bud that blossomed. Eventually it drooped like all petunias do. Except that it was alone, between those bricks. I know you’re waiting for the poetic predictable, for me to anthropomorphize the petunia, lend it characteristics like courage and determination, maybe even loneliness, or pride. But I won’t. Nope. It was a Ding an sich. It was a petunia, pure and simple. Like a red wheel barrow or a white chicken, it was not a rose. I will tell you though that it got more attention from passersby than any petunia in even the most thickly planted window box on the street. Other neighbors celebrated it like it was a hero – but only while it blossomed. When it wilted, their interest waned. No one mourned its passing, as far as I know, not even Betsy. Just me. Now it’s winter. Every gray morning, as I avoid patches of ice on the bricks, I remember the brilliant vermillion of that petunia. And I think that the thing is, if it is possible the petunia had all sorts of human feelings, the whole range, from bliss to despair, I’m convinced it was pleased to have bloomed. And that was enough. Lisa E. Paige Copyrighted material 2008

Let's send Barbie and GI Joe to bed

2008-11-11T14:33:00.000-05:00

Did this election blind us to color or bend gender forever? Or both? Since the election on November 4th, the media has said plenty about how Barack Obama’s victory has changed the face of America and expanded the American dream: “Young African Americans can now be anything they want to be!” But this admittedly astonishing accomplishment—Obama’s heroic smash through the ultimate glass ceiling previously causing African American cynicism that their American dream is different from the white guy’s, which in turn deflated the academic ambition of countless African American youths—has eclipsed another significant Change with a Capital C. And ironically, it became evident through the bi-partisan abuse of Caribou Barbie. If you are a baby boomer or anyone born since Adlai Stevenson ran for president, you are quite accustomed to the sad truth that in most environments looks inevitably trump smarts—whether in a hotel lounge or a boardroom. In fact, it was one of the most important lessons we learned in school. In high school—at least your typical public high school, and most of the Catholic ones, too—it is so uncool to be smart outside a safe circle of honors-courses, quiz bowl, music-room or poetry club friends (read, “nerds”) that we learn to keep it quiet in the general public. In most high schools, smart kids learn how to act—to play a role to avoid being mocked and taunted. We learn in junior high school that it’s best to keep to ourselves. For example, one unwritten law: Fear the girls’ room. No end of indignities can be and have been perpetrated in those windowless, unsupervised spaces. The horror stories of being cornered in a stall and terrorized, risking purse, notebooks and pride in the potential physical and emotional skirmish abound. I suffered my own share of embarrassment for violating the “thou shalt not be smart” law. In the days before backpacks, I had my books knocked out of my arms and my skirt kicked up in a crowded hallway. I was shoved around in the smoky haze at the back of the school bus and pointed and laughed at while trying to remain invisible after having been the only one to turn in the social studies homework when the teacher forgot to ask. In fact, it went back even further than that. “Mean Girls” are nothing new—they mocked my plaid book bag in grade school and one of my second grade classmates stole my clever little pencil-shaped pencil case and scratched its point into the gravelly playground surface until it was beyond repair—like my ability to feel comfortable in my own skin. I grew up having enough spunk not to bury my abilities completely, but also sensible enough not to flaunt them in the wrong company. I grew up having learned how to pretend to be something I wasn’t any time I chose to avoid discomfort. That is—until I got to college, where fortunately for me, I was in an unusual environment much unlike that at the big state schools where cheerleaders and jocks continue to reign. At my “prestigious” college (where I was a scholarship student with all the wrong clothes—something more easily changed than my IQ), we were all expected to be “wicked smart.” If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be there. But that experience didn’t extend into non-academic life. Back out into the real world, I hesitated to tell people where I’d gone to college, lest they do that routine shocked retreat I quickly became accustomed to; I am not making this up—strangers actually step back and stare at you like you’re some kind of freak when learning that you went to one of “those” schools, like they’re looking for your third boob or something. Then they make some uncomfortable self-deprecating joke only leading up to a reference to how different you must be (that third boob has gotta be there somewhere) and excuse themselves rapidly. (It really makes you wanna tell them the well-kept secret that you had to sell your eggs for scientific research to get admitted, but that’s another story.) Well, this election changed all that. Thank you Hillary. Thank you Barack. And yes, thank you, W, McCain, and Sarah Palin. When I saw Bill Clinton stumping for our President Elect in the final week of the campaign, I witnessed him preening in front of the worshipping crowd (yes, he is still gloriously commanding and charismatic in person no matter how many blue dress jokes we tossed around before jockeying for seats close to the stage), then began to speak about the reasons we all needed to vote Obama. It was more than that it was time to change direction, Clinton said. It was more than that the Republicans had been given plenty of time to mess up mostly everything important to Americans and our Founding Fathers (the Supreme Court and executive power included) and even socializing banking. It was more than that W had lied to us about WMDs and was now summarily regarded as just as much a failure at running the country as he was as CEO of every business he’d ever run into the ground. It was because W, from the beginning, just refused to admit how much he didn’t know. Could it be that doing so might have made him look—no matter how cowboy-booted—less “masculine”? On the other hand, Bill Clinton admitted that when in office he himself had been teased for being a “policy wonk.” (No wonder his, err, ego needed constant stroking.) Clinton added, and I paraphrase, wouldn’t you feel more comfortable knowing that your president had actually read everything on the topic at hand, than just deciding on the basis that he’s the “Decider”? I mean, if you’re hiring someone to be the Decider-in-Chief, don’t you want him or her to be as informed as possible? And beyond that, Clinton said, this Obama fellow is even smart enough to admit when and where, despite his intellectual ability honed through all his education at those scary “prestigious” schools, he could still use some help understanding an issue. Our former president told the story of when, during the economic crisis that hit during the campaign, Obama called as many economic experts and advisors as he trusted, including Hillary and Bill, before proceeding with his vote on that cursed Bailout. “He said he wanted to be sure he understood,” President Clinton said. “He admitted it was complex.” After eight long years of the ascendancy of Brawn over Brains, we are at last rewarded with a landslide victory for Brains, and better yet, Brains secure enough to admit often needing more Brains. Finally, those mudslingers accusing Obama of being an elitist because he worked hard enough in school to get into the best colleges and graduate schools in America have been silenced. Another miracle is that Obama isn’t playing any of those “down home Arkansas” linguistic games that Clinton used to pull out to make all the anti-intellectuals among the electorate feel better about themselves. Nor has he slipped into Inner City Black Dialect. Nope. He’s flat out grammatically correct (doesn’t even “verb” much, though I wonder with dread how long after being sworn in his press office will start touting what he’s been “impacting”), and whereas not a swaggering, Stetson-hatted, Joe-Sixpack Marlboro Man, but instead a skinny guy with big ears, he’s still “masculine”—in fact, he’s redefining the term. What the heck? Gender expectations and stereotypes have just been turned as ass-backwards as the choice of Joe-the-non-Plumber to influence our voting. Can it be that Obama is so secure in his “masculinity” that he can be someone with those traditionally “feminine” characteristics like empathy, caring, and honesty about his/her own limitations, and yet exude power? I mean, yesterday I saw an AP photograph of him dropping his girls off at school! Isn’t that a total departure from the stereotypical behavior inner-city African American boys have to adopt in order to appear “masculine”? Let’s turn to the women. Sarah, poor dear Sarah. You didn’t really know what those guys in Armani and Brooks Brothers suits were putting you up to, did you? Not that you’re dumb—let’s get that right out there, right away. But Sarah, you’re not educated. You really don’t know your geography, and seeing Russia’s coast does not mean you understand its history and geopolitical significance, but worse, you made it painfully apparent in multiple situations that you’re not overly comfortable thinking. Sarah, I swear, I’ve got nothing against the way you ascended to governor in Alaska, and Go Second Amendment Gal (though I hope your ever-growing family ate the meat of every mammal you ever hunted). Listen to me—I’m supporting you, in my own scary feminist way. There’s a lot wrong with ex-McCain campaigners calling your hometown folk Wasillabillies now that your short-term usefulness to them has expired. But Sarah: The Barbie act doesn’t work on the national scale. Your mistake—and those of the Republican machine who did you (and the McCain campaign) a catastrophic disservice—was thinking that “feminine” still means pretty and willing to please—in this case turning into a smiling pitbull and stirring up racist fervor when so directed. That having a hockey mom background was going to be enough when they mavericked you right into the national arena amongst the biggest bull-ies of all. Sarah, when I heard it suggested last weekend on NPR that if you wanted to run in 2012, you’d better find yourself a house with a view of a library, I laughed out loud. And then I realized how much I agreed. Lots of us might not be able to place Uzbekistan on a blank map of Asia, but on the other hand, plenty of us do know that the Congo is a country in the “Dark Continent”—as is Kenya, by the by. And I hope that whoever is leading my country is a) at least as educated as I am and b) willing to seek help with what he or she doesn’t fully understand—and not from Wikipedia. Anyone who, like Obama, has learned through struggling or sailing through (does it matter which?) excellent institutions of learning that what really counts is not how much you know or even who you know (although the latter helps), but how willing you are to a) learn and b) admit what you don’t know. Apparently Obama learned that great Harvard lesson that there’s always going to be someone who knows more than you, and that as long as you’re willing to ask (even for directions), that someone will likely help you find the answer. For our President Elect’s sake, I hope that when asked, bipartisan Brains will step up to the biggest home plate in the Nation with altruistic input on how to hit both sliders and fastballs right out of the park. Let’s face it—right now, we need every Brain and bat we can find. And the people know it. In the primary, Pennsylvania—a state of voters maligned by their own governor and an entrenched Congressman—chose the known smartie-pants-suit over the unknown Obama, not because of racism, as it turns out. Otherwise, in the general election, Pennsylvanians wouldn’t have chosen Obama by a significant 11 percent. They voted for a man who by then had displayed himself as calm, confident, capable and articulate—even eloquent, Sen. McCain. These traits were in opposition to the brave but awkward front put up by a well-meaning man, a heroic man, an experienced legislator, and a man who graduated close to last in his class from the military academy. A man who knew what he knew, but when it came to being a Decider in his campaign, let himself be out-done in 2000 by the likes of our own evil empire, Rove and Company, and in 2008 by his wilier party cronies who persuaded him to pick Ms. Wasilla as his running mate to capture that Joe Sixpack vote. He seemed more at home in his concession speech than at any other time in the campaign. It makes you wonder. Was he secretly relieved that someone else would now have to do the heavy thinking? The kind of stuff not prioritized at military school? Was he finally, just then, secure in his instinct that even Joe-Sixpack would find Palin cute and distracting, but not smart enough? Oh, a few of my less PC friends admitted they wouldn’t mind “nailin’ Palin,” but despite all that, I have to believe they weren’t overly comfortable with placing her a heartbeat away from the Oval Office and red telephone. And I’m not even touching the horror the stalwart Hillary supporters experienced when the choice of Palin as candidate for VP was announced. In the end, Election ’08 simply was not a Pretty Woman fairy tale. The American people did not buy that the Party of Keep-Those-Gender-Roles-Steady despite all outward appearances—Testosterone as boss and Well-dressed as saved-from-the-outback sidekick—could move into the big white house and make themselves and everyone else happy. Not just any woman—no matter how pretty and full of undeveloped talent—would do. Can it be that I’m living in a country where everything I’ve always believed more valuable than the latest lip gloss, “Desperate Housewives” sensibility, and even a fur coat and a guy with a fat IRA might finally be winning out? And is one of the silver linings of today’s economy that the frenetic advertisers of throw-away goods and products may finally have to retreat a bit? Can it be that at last, we who have always valued learning over looks can emerge and encourage the rest of the country to confess that it isn’t a bad thing to know just a little bit more about our world than we’ve been shown on “America’s Funniest Home Video”? Can it be that in the year in which we’ve seen the vacuous behavior of Paris Hilton decried and the culture of chic-above-all recognized as dangerous to everyone from Spears to Lohan, the year in which Caribou Barbie and “you’re with us or you’re not” jingoism took it on the chin, it may be time to put Barbie and GI Joe to bed—oh, dear, not in the same bed?!—for good? So instead of just celebrating that African American boys and girls can finally aspire to a once color-coded American dream (not that such a thing is small!), let’s tell all our daughters—and sons—that gender expectations have just been exploded, too. A skinny smart guy with big ears can be a big hero. A smart woman in a size-10 pantsuit can win more popularity than an empty Dior suit atop a pair of great legs. Tell ’em not to hide their smarts, but to put ’em out there. Hell, even no more saying, “Me and her are going to the mall” just to fit in. Go nominative case. Live dangerously. Seriously, though, let’s tell our kids that they shouldn’t want to go to college so they can buy things, but so they can learn things—most of all, how to think for themselves. Like how to become the deciders to fix things we, who in submitting at least in part to the strictly gendered ideals of the generation before us, have screwed up. And more importantly, the deciders that their kids and their kids’ kids—and the rest of the kids on this planet—desperately need them to be.

Apple Picking

2008-11-07T14:09:00.000-05:00

Apple Picking It was because of your gift of that apple that I remembered tart and sweet are bedfellows, crisp like a morning that makes you want to get up. Your simple sacrifice reminded me how an apple, if not picked, will fall and lose the perfection meant for the one who could have reached the core and, forgetting all else, recognized the seed as pure potential. Lisa Paige Copyrighted material October 2008

Welcome

2008-11-07T13:29:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my new blog, which will be literary -- creative nonfiction and poetry -- all of it, I hope, relevant to current events, and with a sensitivity toward feminist readings of life. What does gender do to our lives? How does it affect our writing and our thinking? How does our existence within gender codes produce and affect the meanings we take away from experiences of literary production of all sorts ... errr, including our daily lives? Has the nonviolent revolution we've just experienced in Election 2008 changed our lives as women and men? What is yet to come? What does turning 50 mean as a woman? Do I ask enough questions? Come along and ask some with me.

Falling into Freedom

2008-11-07T13:26:00.000-05:00

Flock’s Fall Flight Their upward surge was sudden The lift so strong I felt pulled toward the heavens I too am so powerfully drawn Toward winging out of town And leaving all that was of another season Both constricting and beloved Behind me Finding the winds of hope That answer my persisting lust for freedom The V assists the flock The strongest leading with No judgment of those at the back Gliding on the strength of those before them The year I turned 50 My daughter told me that without My lead My courage When it came time for her to take flight To take her place at the front She could not have My time to head the V is past I flew already against so many headwinds And now would rather glide But not alone. Lisa E. Paige Copyrighted Material November 2008