A Secret World — A Special Soliloquy

Inside the books...

Is where I find Lulu, in the family room scanning the tall shelves, the hundreds of books. Have you read all of these? she asks.

Ah huh, I nod, just about. Wait, maybe I didn't read Sister Carrie.

Wow! I don't know why I hadn't noticed these before. I never really looked at them all. 

Yes, I say, well it's not a big deal. I've had a half century to read stories.

Lu swipes her paws across the paper spines and smiles, Hmm, true, but it's still a lot of books.

These books have been my secret worlds. Each one of them, with their own special suns and stars, seas and rivers, pyramids, canyons, gulags. They are made from Poof! Just like this multifaceted planet on which we make our home.

Max tells me that it all started with a bubble, or foam, from which things popped. Or fizzed. I ask him where the bubble, or maybe the foam, came from. There must have been air. Was this the kind of foam in which you could take a bath? He shakes his head, up, down, Yup, yup, that's the question! Exactly.

Planets, universes, worlds, or books—the Poof! came from something. May I suggest, a mastermind?

This was the world before Poof: someone, something, yes, a mastermind conceived a plot, a situation, characters, conflict, tension, climax, resolution, catastrophe, revelation, and designed, created, this story within a dramatic structure, along a sweeping arc, born of a secret world, and put it (and run-on sentences, too) out there, in the air, in space, in the universe, on the planets, on Earth, on bookshelves, at Amazon, for us. For our pleasure.

This is true.

Poof!

This January I will be joining another kind of secret world. For the next two years, in this mystical, somewhat secluded bubble of a world (a/k/a  The Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College), I will be working with some brilliant and highly regarded authors, and will be reading no less than one-hundred books. And maybe, writing one. Actually, I'm registered, matriculated, and have already begun the work. January will bring the first of five ten-day residencies over the following two year period. This full-time process, in theory, should culminate with a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing and literature.

I'm pretty excited.

And terrified.

I am not a mastermind, but I'm hoping for a big Poof!

This, of course, will require a lot of dark (or white) space for a while. Not quite a vacuum, but a space with clear, colorless, odorless air in which to breath, void of fiery comets or space debris, or anything that has the potential to crash into my secret world and throw me off course. You know what I mean. It will require many days at the library. Cloistered. So here, my friends, may be my last post for a long while. I won't say forever. But, well, you know I'm no multi-tasker.

Saturday night, Michael and I went out to listen to Red Molly, a girl band (as they refer to themselves), a really fabulous girl band about whom I wrote, in a Frolic, nearly a year and a half ago. They were performing in a small town in Massachusetts. There, in an acoustically perfect coffeehouse, at the very end of the evening, past 11:00 PM and bordering on breaking some serious rules (wrap it up girls—our traffic detail needs to go home!), they sang their final song.

May I suggest.

And this song, I forward to you, a Thanksgiving of sorts, a Thank You. Until I once again emerge from my secret world...

Poof!

 May I Suggest by Suburban Soliloquist 

May I Suggest

By Susan Werner

May I suggest


May I suggest to you


May I suggest this is the best part of your life


May I suggest
/ This time is blessed for you


This time is blessed and shining almost blinding bright


Just turn your head
/ And you'll begin to see


The thousand reasons that were just beyond your sight


The reasons why /
Why I suggest to you


Why I suggest this is the best part of your life



There is a world


That's been addressed to you


Addressed to you, intended only for your eyes


A secret world


Like a treasure chest to you


Of private scenes and brilliant dreams that mesmerize


A lover's trusting smile
/ A tiny baby's hands


The million stars that fill the turning sky at night


Oh I suggest
/ Oh I suggest to you


Oh I suggest this is the best part of your life



There is a hope


That's been expressed in you


The hope of seven generations, maybe more


And this is the faith
/ That they invest in you


It's that you'll do one better than was done before


Inside you know
/ Inside you understand


Inside you know what's yours to finally set right


And I suggest
/ And I suggest to you


And I suggest this is the best part of your life



This is a song


Comes from the west to you


Comes from the west, comes from the slowly setting sun


With a request / With a request of you


To see how very short the endless days will run


And when they're gone


And when the dark descends


Oh we'd give anything for one more hour of light



And I suggest this is the best part of your life

Chasing Pearls

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

~Frederico Fellini

Tiniest of tiny pearls found in a Chesapeake Bay oyster.

More than a half century ago, Father, while in Japan, where he'd been on leave at the close of the Korean War, bought Mother a lustrous, round, classical pearl, perhaps a half inch in diameter—set in a simple four pronged gold ring—which he took home to Mother after completing two years of overseas service.

As a young girl, I was in love with the pearl. It was perfect. It was what I called Grace-Kelly-pearl-perfect. Elegant and royal. What kept me entranced, though, was that the shimmery, cream-tinged pearl was loosely caged by its prongs so that I could gently flick it with my finger and watch it shake in its crown. My magnanimous mother let me wear it on occasion, and I wore it often enough that it became, unofficially, a part of my jewelry collection which, at that time, was comprised entirely of cheap mixed metals, glass, rope and plastic.

On a pretty autumn day after school let out, against my parents wishes, and with pearl ring slipped on finger, I went for a ride on a motorcycle with my then boyfriend. The sun, brilliant, the afternoon, T-shirt-warm and breezy—a perfect day for an Easy Rider freedom spin. We rumbled down the street, circled around the block, and as we reached the midway point back to the old colonial a crazed white dog lunged at the bike, bringing us down against a curb.  Then boyfriend was uninjured, as I recall, but my left hand was mangled and bloody. I still have the scars, literally, to prove it.

Back at home, where Mother tended to my wounds, I noticed that the gold ring's pearl had got loose entirely. So, of course, did Mother. Long lectures and the gallows ensued. Father came home and immediately went out in search of the pearl, which, he anticipated, had either been confiscated or lost to the storm drains.

But he found it. Without a blemish, beneath leaves and gravel in the gutter.

Along the Chesapeake Bay last month, Hubby uncovered a tiny, luminous pearl, smaller than the size of the sugar pearls that adorn wedding cakes, in an oyster he was about to consume. We wrapped the pearl in paper towel scrap and brought it home where it was deposited into a small, lopsided, three-footed clay vessel made by Max—in his elementary school days.

This morning, during the little pearl's outdoor photo shoot, I inadvertently knocked the pearl from the black-velvet-swathed teak table on which it sat. Rolling beneath the table and along the deck flooring, it quickly found its escape between the narrow spacing of the decking boards, falling one story to the muddy, mossy, pebble-covered ground below.

Lost.

Thirty minutes later I had done the impossible: rooted it out.

It turns out, my family is good at hunting down pearls.

The pearl—calcium carbonate-layered grime, slipped between the oyster's mantle and shell—so it is said, has powers such as love, protection and good fortune. It symbolizes purity, wisdom and spiritual transformation. It represents triumph over adversity through transcendence. I'm not sure about that. In my experience, it seems the pearl has been a source of stress. (Or could it be my mishandling of the pearl?) An iridescent souvenir that fights captivity!

Then again, it appears to be more: a reminder to handle with care and consideration those things precious. What can be maimed and scarred when neglected. What we hold close to the mantle.  Our gems. Flesh or stone.

Chasing Pearls

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

~Frederico Fellini

Tiniest of tiny pearls found in a Chesapeake Bay oyster.

More than a half century ago, Father, while in Japan, where he'd been on leave at the close of the Korean War, bought Mother a lustrous, round, classical pearl, perhaps a half inch in diameter—set in a simple four pronged gold ring—which he took home to Mother after completing two years of overseas service.

As a young girl, I was in love with the pearl. It was perfect. It was what I called Grace-Kelly-pearl-perfect. Elegant and royal. What kept me entranced, though, was that the shimmery, cream-tinged pearl was loosely caged by its prongs so that I could gently flick it with my finger and watch it shake in its crown. My magnanimous mother let me wear it on occasion, and I wore it often enough that it became, unofficially, a part of my jewelry collection which, at that time, was comprised entirely of cheap mixed metals, glass, rope and plastic.

On a pretty autumn day after school let out, against my parents wishes, and with pearl ring slipped on finger, I went for a ride on a motorcycle with my then boyfriend. The sun, brilliant, the afternoon, T-shirt-warm and breezy—a perfect day for an Easy Rider freedom spin. We rumbled down the street, circled around the block, and as we reached the midway point back to the old colonial a crazed white dog lunged at the bike, bringing us down against a curb.  Then boyfriend was uninjured, as I recall, but my left hand was mangled and bloody. I still have the scars, literally, to prove it.

Back at home, where Mother tended to my wounds, I noticed that the gold ring's pearl had got loose entirely. So, of course, did Mother. Long lectures and the gallows ensued. Father came home and immediately went out in search of the pearl, which, he anticipated, had either been confiscated or lost to the storm drains.

But he found it. Without a blemish, beneath leaves and gravel in the gutter.

Along the Chesapeake Bay last month, Hubby uncovered a tiny, luminous pearl, smaller than the size of the sugar pearls that adorn wedding cakes, in an oyster he was about to consume. We wrapped the pearl in paper towel scrap and brought it home where it was deposited into a small, lopsided, three-footed clay vessel made by Max—in his elementary school days.

This morning, during the little pearl's outdoor photo shoot, I inadvertently knocked the pearl from the black-velvet-swathed teak table on which it sat. Rolling beneath the table and along the deck flooring, it quickly found its escape between the narrow spacing of the decking boards, falling one story to the muddy, mossy, pebble-covered ground below.

Lost.

Thirty minutes later I had done the impossible: rooted it out.

It turns out, my family is good at hunting down pearls.

The pearl—calcium carbonate-layered grime, slipped between the oyster's mantle and shell—so it is said, has powers such as love, protection and good fortune. It symbolizes purity, wisdom and spiritual transformation. It represents triumph over adversity through transcendence. I'm not sure about that. In my experience, it seems the pearl has been a source of stress. (Or could it be my mishandling of the pearl?) An iridescent souvenir that fights captivity!

Then again, it appears to be more: a reminder to handle with care and consideration those things precious. What can be maimed and scarred when neglected. What we hold close to the mantle.  Our gems. Flesh or stone.

April Hath Thirty Days

April cold with dripping rain 

   Willows and lilacs brings again.     

                                                                               ~Ralph Waldo Emerson                                                                                         

This, from today's calendar in The Old Farmer's Almanac: Folly and learning often dwell together.

And this:

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.
~From The Year, by Sara Coleridge

I'm attempting to muster some writerly mojo. I've been in a royal funk since Sheila bid farewell to the earth twelve days ago. Mother gave me an aromatic, wild Irish rose plant in memory of my wild, crazy-enough-to-grab-hold-of-life (as Sheila's nephew said in his eloquent eulogy for her) Irish friend. It blushes just as blithely as Sheila did. I'll make room for it in the front beds, where it will get plenty of sunshine and attention. Or perhaps I'll plant it at the family camp in Maine, where Sheila loved to watch the sun fall to pulsing purple beyond the lake on a late summer evening.

A couple of days ago I was reminded that April is National Poetry Month. For English class, Lulu's been scratching out various kinds of poems (you'd think that, alone, would have cast a fine hue of clues in my direction—seems I haven't been fully present). Last night, Lu embellished her poetry e-book with the requisite glitter and art, and asked me to take a look at it before she turned the project in today. I scanned the pages to find that not only was Lu's poetic mojo intact, but that some of her poems also demonstrated that folly and learning do, indeed, often dwell together (although, not always in the manner implied by the old proverb). By Lulu:

A Limerick:

Her name was Sam

And she loved ham

But soon

A loon

Took Sam and all her ham

A Clerihew Poem:

His name is Max

He can’t pay tax

When he walks in the room

All the glass goes kaboom

And finally, something a bit more subdued:

A Prepositional Poem:

Hope:

Inside the house

Under the stars

Among the river

Through the brush

Above the trees

Near the land

Over the sea

Hidden in sand

Past the surface

Into the heart

Before the beginning

After the start

Inside us all

Daisies at my feet; primrose sweet. Loons and kabooms. Whatever April brings, I shall awaken to receive it. Stay open to it. Even a silly poem. Even rain. Even hope.

*  *  *

I'll be on a short blog break from today through April 22nd, and will hope to return with my mojo. For National Poetry Month, you may want to check the goings on over at Poetry Foundation. And at POETS.org you'll find thirty ways to celebrate poetry this April.

Magnolia Monday

“Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.”


~ H.P. Lovecraft, “The White Ship”

Last year I nearly missed the magnolia bloom. It was mid April when it was in full blossom (perhaps beyond) and Max told me that rain made him feel good. Two weeks ago the same bush fussed with buds and I've had my eye on it each day since. It doesn't last long--its innocent, blushing youth.

I don't much like March. The shrieking wind, premature flourish, spurious hope, inescapable fray and wilt. Moist, silky efflorescence plummets to its doom. Becomes earth. Anon. Sky. Heavens.

Black and white.

Grey is the illusion.

And then... 

Spring's noble, ancient magnolia persists! Sweet magnolia. Riding in like a white knight on its cloaked horse, lance clenched in hand. Awaken! Hear ye, hear ye: Spring is for the living!

Monday is for the living.

Today is for the living.

The Franklin Line

She is on the commuter rail reading the restored edition of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast.  Her eyes are misting over like the city she's about to walk through. She can't let go the last line of the Forward, what Hemingway's son, Patrick, reveals to be his father's last professional writing and "the true foreword to A Moveable Feast: 'This book contains material from the remises of my memory and of my heart. Even if the one has been tampered with and the other does not exist.'"

He'd taken his own life a few months before she'd been born, and she'd grown up with his books at her trinket covered bedside table, thinking the man—of the few author's she'd read at the time—the most rugged, brave, passionate. Perhaps she'd held too close this quixotic adaptation of the novelist, and this line, this last line of the Foreword, causes her a minor heartbreak for Hemingway. This is not her handsome Hemingway, she thinks.

The train enters South Station and she slips her cap over her head, walks down Essex to Surface to Beach and through Chinatown. It's early morning and the street vendors have not yet set their tables at the curbs. Snow melts from Chinatown's sloped rooftops and awnings and dampens the fleece toque on her head. She crosses over to Kneeland to Tufts Medical Center.

At the TMJ clinic on the sixth floor the receptionist asks her if she's there for sleep or TMJ. She pauses a moment, she wants to say Sleep! Sleep would be nice. Had she bothered with such pleasantries (as she ordinarily does) she would have engaged the receptionist in a short conversation about the joy of sleep and the dolor of insomnia. Oh, I know, wouldn't we all like more sleep! the receptionist would cluck. But she's too tired for conversation. What she says is TMJ, and does not elaborate, and the receptionist automatically hands her a clipboard with the usual craniofacial pain indicator.

In Dr. Correa's surgical suite, her day and night guards are adjusted. They're too tight and the night bite splint keeps her from a deep sleep. She can hear Dr. Correa, in an adjacent room, whittling away at the hard plastic pieces with a drill. She slides off the exam chair and moves toward the glass bay. The window washers aren't banging against the concrete on their suspended scaffolding today. She spreads the louvered shades with her hands and looks across the street at the Floating Hospital where her daughter had had surgery in May. She thought about seeing her in pre-op, Everything will be fine, just fine, she'd said, and then, after Lu was wheeled away, she'd walked out the heavy swing doors and fell to pieces.

She looks north, to the right, up Washington beyond the Paramount, and, if she could have seen that far, the Old State House at Devonshire, Faneuil Hall at the foot of Congress, and Mass General a brisk walk beyond where her husband had been admitted for surgery in September. But her attention shifts to Government Center where they had parted after their first date more than twenty years ago, and where, just across the way at One Beacon, she had secured her first job in Boston, at a lively law firm that occupied four of the building's thirty-seven floors. If she could have fixed her eyes west on Kneeland where it stretches along the edge of the theatre district, funneling into Back Bay and Brookline beyond, she might have remembered how much she misses the walk down Chestnut Hill Ave from her apartment on Commonwealth to Bangkok Bistro at Cleveland Circle for chicken massaman, and then up Beacon, past her old apartment above the Rabbi's brownstone, to the Tam for a Bass Ale. But the Floating Hospital blocked her view west and she could see only the enormous brick facade of the medical center.

She thinks about lunch with Max at Jade Garden, and how he'd happily annihilated an oversized bowl of boiled shrimp, scallops and octopus. She thinks about the spongy pork buns and fragrant lotus leaf wrapped rice at Hei la Moon's dim sum with Lulu, and Blue Man Group, where she'd dug herself out from under toilet paper with both of them. She reminds herself to pick up mangosteens, winter jujubes and guava—the kids' favorites—on her way back to the train station. This had become her routine. And she didn't mind, even if it had become pedestrian, it took her back to a place, or even a time, she wished to be. She was not constructed for the burbs. She didn't understand its particular syntax or mechanics, the conformities within its framework, nor the nuances of its assembly. It was a misplaced parenthetical where she bided her time as the children played in the streets, joined soccer and lacrosse teams, engaged in requisite and acceptable activities. She longed for the rack and pinion of the city or the notched ridge of a mountain. The in-between hollowed her heart.

Boston was the city where, among its quaint stone buildings, streetcars, glass skyscrapers, Irish pubs, emerald parks and broad river—a place she'd felt was home, and it was home—she'd grown into herself. Now she gazed out the window at the snow-lined streets of a place that seemed far away; had she really lived there for more than a decade? During the past year, Boston had become her destination for sober reasons. She was at Tufts to be deprogrammed. When did the grinding start?

Dr. Correa returns to the room with her newly shaped appliances. They are the first part of the program. The second and third parts are physical therapy and relaxation. He asks her to sit down and keep them on for a while to determine if they're comfortable. She sits and tries to relax. She snaps the upper guard in and moves her jaw forward and back. There's more tongue room now, she says. She takes it out and tries the lower guard which seems looser and more wearable, which is important, the doctor reminds her, because we want you to be happy. We want the program to work.

Yes, they're fine, she says, just fine. 

The doctor tells her to call if anything changes, otherwise, he'll see her again in three weeks.

She looks out the window one last time, packs her bag and runs back to South Station to catch the 2:40 so she can pick her kids up by 4:00pm. Under the split-flap she realizes that in her rush she'd forgotten to buy the Asian produce and would return home fruitless. She sits in a forward facing chair, because she does not like to ride backwards, tucks her Charlie Card in the loop on the seat in front of her and opens her book. The Franklin Line schedule marks where she'd left off at the end of Chapter 8: "All I must do now was stay sound and good in my head until morning when I would start to work again. In those days we never thought that any of that could be difficult."

___________________________________


Thank you to Leah, of Eating Life Raw, for gifting to me the Versatile Blogger award (which I've added to the sidebar).  I had the happy occasion of personally meeting Leah last October when she travelled north to visit family, and I can vouch that Leah not only eats life raw but does so with fresh insight and tenacious optimism! Her words inspire—each of her posts are wrapped in shiny paper and curly ribbon, like little gifts to the world.

Slush and Other Stuff

In the publishing world, this is what you would call slush. It came unsolicited and from a less stable source. The sort of precipitation I requested is known as snow. Not slush. What came slickly dressed from the skies yesterday was aspiring snow. Kids' stuff. Which, today, has vaporized like many a child star. 

So much for last Friday's rain, er, snow dance. Maybe if we'd all get together, form two lines (ladies and gents) and stomp... 

Naysayers.

Not so long ago, in 1988, during what the Government declared "the worst drought in fifty years" (affecting two-fifths of the country), a group of farmers from Ohio asked the Rosebud, S.D. Sioux tribesman, Leonard Crow Dog (there should be a Wiki link here), to assist them with their pleas for rain. Crow Dog met the farmers in Clyde, Ohio, and performed a rain/pipe dance, which, it is said, was followed by a crackling in the sky and a niagra of a rainfall. Well, I exaggerate--it was more like a quarter inch or less. Still.

I think I need to get a pipe.

Did anyone else miss Wiki today?

Stomp. Stomp. Puff.

Self-Apologies

Internet source unknown

The calliope sounds. Rise and run. At least that's what Ray Bradbury says. Run! This, I promise myself, I will do every morning. Not along the paved roads of this tidy suburban town, not along the park's grasses, but along the dark and dulled keys of my laptop. Along the crevices and couloirs of my cranium.

With champion intent—after first getting beyond the email flurry, the deletions, additions and responses, and any other immediate business, like say, Facebook, blog hopping, reading the papers—trusting I can do this, I open a word doc and stare at the empty white space between the margins. For a long time. And proceed to get angry with myself. Inevitably, broken, frustrated, I find something else to do.

Why? Because I doubt myself. I doubt I'll ever polish a story lustrous enough to shine upon the surface of print. I read other writers and think, Christ, I'll never be that good. What I think, is that I showed up at the feast much too late. So I come to the table expecting not to be fed. I find only morsels of grain which I casually swipe off the table top! What kind of behavior is that? With that sort of attitude, I should be grounded for the weekend. No phone. No friends. No television (which might help).

And then I lift my hand to find stale food particles clinging to the sweaty creases of my palm, teasing my hunger.

So what I've got is a whole bunch of short stories that I've yet to seriously edit. And even more to begin. Begin. This is work, dammit. And instead I blog and find other diversions. I'm guilty. I'm mad at me. And I ought to apologize.

I have a manila folder labeled "The Sorry File" in which letters of apology are stored. My kids are good at apologizing. So good that their handwritten apology letters warrant a special file. Like this one (with my son's permission):

Some day, when they're grown and have children of their own, I'll mail their apology letters to them—just as my mother returns all my little handmade letters, coupons, notes and articles to me. They are also tucked in a folder, a reminder of a time, in my very innocent Catholic school girl days, when all I wanted was to be a writer.

Back then I was crafting things like Smokey Bear posters with crayon on a piece of five foot wide white industrial paper from a roll on a dowel fastened to our garage wall. And McGovern for President propaganda (McGovern for Pres., You've got to confess, You want McGovern!) on spiral bound notepads. I thought for sure my campaign would guarantee the Office to McGovern. Hell, who wanted Nixon for a second term? There was also an illustrated ant invasion story. (Yeck.) In high school I joined the Villa Novans newspaper and wrote articles. I believed I'd be a writer.

And then my sister went to school for journalism. And my brother went to school for communications. And when it was finally my time to go to college, well, I had to do something different. I couldn't follow the same path as my older siblings! Don't copy me! (No one ever said it but I feared hearing it.) I had to do my own thing, though I didn't know what that meant.

I remember telling my guidance counselor I wanted to be a writer, not a journalist, but a writer. He didn't say so, but he didn't seem to think that a writer was a bona-fide profession. He smiled his you're-so-sweetly-naive-young-lady-how-will-you-make-a-living-from-that smile and responded by suggesting (based on my vocational assessment test—but certainly not my grades) that I might make a good lawyer, or social worker, that my skills would translate well to child development and counseling. And I let myself believe that. For a long time.

I went into social work. I entered the legal field. I didn't write. (Except for contracts, briefs, affidavits and other sorts of exciting legal instruments.)

But I don't blame my guidance counselor or anyone else for my failure to write, for letting the desire to rise each day and run dissipate like escaping steam from a pressure cooker. Just me. Guilty. Even more so now that I have a little more time to devote to the craft.

Here, I apologize to myself. That was stupid—waiting so long. I'm very sorry. What I really need is courage, a better work ethic and production quotas.

As Bradbury says, To feed well is to grow. I'll take his advice—more reliable than the old guidance counselor— I'll open the lid of that cooker. Let the steam out. Breath in the salty stew of words and phrases and ideas. Taste the modified nouns and verbs. Fill myself with pungent and moist hyperbole. Stop writing about me not writing. And write. Dammit.

I hope my son won't ever have to apologize for not following his dream, nor ever let anyone smile a you're-such-a-naive-nice-boy-how-will-you-make-a-living-from-that smile. Art is, indeed, a bona-fide vocation. Listen to the calliope, I tell him. Rise and run.

Nature's Pernicious Power

Georgia O'Keefe - Black Mesa

As usual, I am woefully late to the party—that is, the celebration for National Women's History Month. But to tell you the truth, I haven't felt much like writing. My mind has been hyper-focused on the natural disasters that literally swallowed much of Japan, and the ensuing meltdown at its nuclear power plants that is sure to have horrific lingering effects.

Maybe it seems so surreal that I'm not yet able to wrap my mind around it. I have read that the earthquake was so large that it may, in fact, have shifted the earth’s axis four inches, and the main island of Japan eight feet. I simply cannot fathom the enormity of these earthly violent convulsions, nor can I imagine the monstrosity of an ocean swell that sweeps away entire towns. Not even as I watch the constant, streaming video of these images can I believe it. I'm beginning to feel like a grotesque voyeur, helplessly viewing someone else's nightmare.

But Japan's nightmare belongs to us all. It reminds us of the fragility of life, of our inability to ever have complete control over all things. We may be able to predict certain Acts of God, and perhaps even mitigate some of the damage, but domination of a force of nature is unlikely. As the disaster deepens, and radioactivity from the second most-dangerous leak in history threatens to contaminate Japan's food-chain and water resources, there will be far reaching consequences. 

My—our—deepest sympathies go out to the Japanese people. There are ways, though, for us to help. The American Red Cross is accepting donations to aid Japan's earthquake and tsunami victims. You can also donate via text message: text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10 for the Japan earthquake and Pacific Tsunami. Also, The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund has been launched by Global Giving. Its funds will be distributed to a variety of relief organizations helping victims of this disaster. 

Pondering all of this during a month that celebrates women's history in America, I think of Georgia O'Keeffe, who revolutionized modern art with her vivid paintings. Her work is pure, stark and startling, evoking the power and emotion of the natural world. Much like Mother Nature herself.

O'Keefe- Red Hills with Flowers

Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small - we haven't the time - 

and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time. 

~ Georgia O'Keefe

******

March 16, 2011 UPDATE:  Some amazing bloggers are organizing to help the people of Japan. Rach (from Rach Writes) spent a year living in Japan, and has teamed with a group of writers who will soon be holding an auction to raise funds for those affected by this disaster. If you are interested in participating, please visit Rach for more info on WRITE HOPE for Japan.