We’re all stuck on hold.
The pioneers thrust out
with their usual
armed vengeance,
no clear purpose
except to recreate
the old world
in the new.
The rest of us wait
Blog Posts
Introductions: Mom died with Alzheimer’s in 2011. In Fall of 2009, we had moved her from assisted living to skilled nursing due to fall risk and escape seeking. “Howling,” from my blog Walhydra’s Porch on 11/9/2009, tells of our last coherent conversation about death.
Walhydra is one of my storytelling alter-egos: a grouchy old witch unhappily reincarnated as a gay male would-be writer.
When things with Mom got so
…When I
get up on the wrong side of the bed
and there’s a wall
there,
Can I
notice the impact of the wall,
observe the feelings,
sense aches,
without seeking a cause?
Without indulging my
self
by sinking and wallowing?
…
I’ve pondered for years the dilemmas of using social media.
There I find ready communication with long-time friends, who rarely use email any more. There I can easily share information, uplift, and humor with a broader readership. Yet there I am also drawn down into the anger, resentment, and despair that seems the default setting for our culture.
How does one discern a way to positive engagement with what is now
…“When we feel inadequate and unworthy, we hoard things. We are so afraid—afraid of losing, afraid of feeling even more poverty-stricken than we do already. This stinginess is extremely sad.
“We could look into it and shed a tear that we grasp and cling so fearfully. This holding on causes us to suffer greatly.
In “Loss of shared space: the second pandemic” (4/17/2020), I wrote:
…Our brains are hardwired so that the mere sight of a face [online] in real time minimally satisfies the need for a sense of presence with each other. But, our brains are in bodies in the material world. And our bodies need more than that minimal sight on a screen in order to feel—to know in the blood—that we are really in the midst of other people.
What happens when much of the human race suddenly loses the safety of sharing physical space? Does this loss go deeper than the pandemic itself? How do we heal from this great social wound?
Most living people have never had to notice how essential the mutual sharing of physical space is—until now.
Worship, school, work, shopping, eating out, going to bars, restaurants, coffeehouses, sporting events, and on, and on. We social animals live and breathe these hours of visceral physical
…
The emptySome nights, some, mornings, I lay awake or come awake with my mind full of unfinished checklists of things I need to get done in the mundane world. So oppressive. the sense of impossibility—impossible even to prioritize, let alone to do.
How do we ever get through this life? It’s as if we feel we must have each breath, each heartbeat on a To Do list, else we will die. Why do our minds betray us in this way? Why
…
NOTE: I’ve changed the original title, “The microaggression of calling out microaggression,” to clarify the focus of my concern. It is important to educate people about instances of microaggression “in the moment.” What troubles me are acts of “calling out” I’ve witnessed which return the injury done, rather than inviting collaborative healing.
The microaggression of calling out
At the quarterly business meeting of my Quaker Yearly Meeting (regional association of Quaker Meetings), I kept stumbling over my own
…