Yesterday was for
feeling the itch
of the past.

Today I'll build a
room inside myself
just for waiting.

Tomorrow I'll
stay as still
as I can.

Driving here, I listen to Pema Chodron who speaks of mental states as things that we can let go of without guilt. For two hours of her nine hour book, I have mostly just let her words comfort me instead of taking them as my gospel and following them like commandments. For one moment I realize I have wild thoughts and I follow the practice she recommends for this, to acnowledge them with "thinking." Something feels different when I do that. No less wild, not sprayed by roundup or cut back, but a change. Then she says we are in constant transition every moment. I am going to Berea, trying my best to drive in a safe limited way. I can listen to Pema Chodron, because she is so much like me.

Yesterday Kaleigh was there with me and Mom and Kaleigh's Mom, Judy, in Bristol. We daughters and Judy went to Bristol Caverns, which I had not done since age 8 on a field trip. In the cave I wonder what it is I am smelling other than wet. In the low place where the pool of water rests, I ask Kaleigh what scent she picks up. She asks the guide if we can touch the water, and he says sure. We go down on the gravel and squat down and rub my hands together the way a racoon does. I hold the moist hand up to my nose and breathe in. Nothing distingishable.

In the cavern, everything is tactile. Everything can be tasted or smelled or touched, but the guide does not permit us to touch most things. The inside of a cave is alive. One rock, "wishing rock", comes with a story that I saw as a paradox. The tour guide tells us that we can touch it and make a wish, because it is dead now because so many people have touched it. And because it looks so tempting, as all of the stalagtites and stalagmites tempt me, I touch this rock because I can. I can tell from the feel of it that it is dead. I want this cave to be protected.

The best part of the cave for me is where the guide says is rock bottom, the lowest point of the cave. This point in the cavern is the bottom, but it actually used to be a wall of a room. But things shift in a cavern. Everything is in transition, right? Standing with the tour group in this place, a feeling comes over me of being incredibly grounded.

The guide is talking about the Indians and how they used grape vines to lower themselves all this way down, down five levels. He has mentioned all sorts of uses of the cavern's rooms, from where the city used to hold meetings (because of the good accoustics), to a place for farmers to store food. And though I was impressed by the stories of the place, like the magnitude of this historical root cellar, what really impressed me was the magnitude of its depth.

Oh how close you are to me what things and folks I will never see if I don't go outside!

Before the dawn of Earthly life
Two moons, one gone now
Shared the sky.
Our mystic lunar majesty
Knocked out the other's legacy.
A sister moon that churned the sea,
A paradox no eyes could see.
So many dreamers made before,
We viewed the sister paramour.
The absence of this cratered essence
Explains a magnitude, a mystery...
A presence.

*In reference to the recent scientific theory that once there were two moons on earth, an idea I thought of eleven medium years ago.

"Eat vegetable soup rather than duck stew." -- Basho said.

So I just sent an email to my Public Relations boss telling him that I am done with duck stew. I really said that to this guy who I barely know. He knows metaphors, so I am hoping he understands this one. It is, after all the one quote that I want to integrate into my life more than any other. It isn't exactly that I am trying to revert to vegetarianism; they weren't cooking legs of lamb in the office kitchen; the fumes were not getting to me; it is more Literary than that.

If working for Public Relations equates to duck stew, menial labor and poetry writing is the best of vegetable soup. I am not my brother who, when offered a job that would have made him a millionaire, turned it down. But this is my personal microcosm of that perhaps.

I am in this college because it is a happy place to be. Living is being in a place. That is what life is all about.

I have often wondered to what degree I am in charge of my happiness. Are my emotions just like koi that grow to the parameters of their pond? If that is true, is it chance or hydroelectric engineers that form my environment and in turn shapes me? How do these metaphors transfer to concrete details? Is nature the main influence of my feelings in which case I lack control. Or is nurture the culprit of my notorious ups and downs. Grasshopper say, fish grow to the size of their pond. So that must be true. But what does that mean exactly? I believe in nature and nurture. I believe nature launches the illness in me and therefore my brain works differently than the 98.5 percent of the population that has not been diagnosed bipolar. But I am here through it all. I have a voice that speaks inside of me and aloud to the world. My voice is influenced by my unique brain and the neurotransmitters and chemicals that make me so different. When I think of the fish and the pond, I remember a recent swim in the reservoir with Amber with minnows nibbling our toes. Fish grow to the size of their pond; we know that. But the truth is, the pond also grows to the size of the fish, or more accurately the pond shrinks. As the fish eats algae and pond plants, it expels its waste, and eventually, the fish forgets it is a fish and the pond forgets if its name is “pond” or “fish.” If I can bring myself to laugh or smile or cut out my anger when it comes, that is when I will overcome the war I sometimes wage with myself.

Every so often I need to translate my grasshopper talk into words that other people can understand. So what have I been doing lately? I am staying in Berea working on staying in one place, staying with it. I have swum some - that was the funnest part. I have read much of Mrs. Dalloway -- the most interesting part. I left a week after I got here because I paniced - the weakest part. That is the short summary, the explanation of things. I cannot wait until school starts and I get to read and write about Bloomsbury Group at last!

There are three types of writers, right? Group one didn't grow up with my kind of encouragement and therefore they are hesitant about making mistakes. Some of them believe in writers block though it doesn't exist. Group two, and I am in this group, write great things sometimes and bad things sometimes, but are entirely unintimidated by writing. We always have something to say, to write. Group three are the editors. They know good writing to the point of perfectionism. I personally perfer group two.

I actually got a full nights worth of rest.

I am so excited about College Algebra!

I wish I had taken more math in college. Maybe I can take one more next term.

I would have been a wildly nerdy math major.

I entered the room.
I sat down where I traditionally sit.
I chewed my salad cud.
Eventually it occurred to me
the wheel barrow in the center of the room
had not been there before.

Where did that come from?
I blurted into the silence
like the hypo-manic Quaker
I sometimes am.

Migration Topics of Interest

“If you can’t keep going, you aren’t going to make it.” Quote from Michelle Tooley’s faces of migration film. (8/24/11) When I heard this particular quote in the film on the first day of class, I was struck by my personal emotional reaction to the quote. It rings so true to me, since I struggle with sticking with things yet have a strong survival instinct. Perhaps the psychological response to the migration that people go through to different aspects of migration affects them on a broader level. I am interested in studying what this quote means on a number of dimensions. It is an axiom that transforms a number of spheres, from personal to global. I would like to research what response that need and desperation conjure in people who migrate. What psychological factors determine the success and survival of migrants?
Examples: Me, Berea International Students, Indians, hen pecked weak runt chicks. “Suicide and alcoholism are common responses to social dislocation. Suicide rates on Canadian Indian reserves are 10 to 20 times higher than the national average.” - Globalization Then and Now

August 28, 2011

I have always been uneasy with the term “terrorist.” I think people who commit acts of terrorism in terms of violence, such as the car bombers, are always wrong in their belligerent actions. But one huge aspect that people tend to overlook is that they do these things for a reason. I think these car bombers are reacting to extreme desperation in their lives. If your basic needs were not met, if you did not have the food, water, shelter, and medicine that you needed, what would you do to survive, to help your family, your country?
I have another qualm with the term “terrorist.” What about corporate CEO’s and militaries who exploit people in the developing world? Monsanto, BP, and the US military come to mind. The people who work to these corporations do not have negative intentions as individuals, of course. Those corporations are terrorists in my book, whether they are overtly committing violence or sowing the fields with chemical dependent corn to be shipped 1,500 miles. I have another problem with using the word “terrorist.” It is a term that breeds racism, looking at diverse people group as “others” or “outsiders,” and spurs anger and hostility. I think there is a connection between the heightened fears against Muslims in the United States and the attacks in September 11, 2001. After September 11, people from the US saw people of other racial groups as a personal threat.