Monday, October 16, 2023

April 5th, 2021. Activism

Dear young activists: take the time to study your elder activists in the ongoing fight.

Don't make the mistake of taking their gains for granted, many of them have lost blood for your sake.  

Don't dismiss or despise them because they aren't in line with your present, which is ephemeral, as is all history.  

Understand their context in history; the culture THEY were dealing with, the tools they had, the injustices they met.  

It's not about burning "those" books, or shaming blame, tearing down what has taken generations to win, or who's appropriating what.  

LEARN from them. Remember that we are all human..

Friday, August 13, 2021

Morning Meditation by Rilke

 Morning Meditation

Have patience with everything
unresolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions
themselves
as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.
Do not search for the answers, which
could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live
them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the
future,
you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live your way
into the answer.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Friday, April 9, 2021

The Free Life. March 23rd 2021

We love the free life, but we don't know what it is.  

Once, I walked and ran across the Land;   

We walked and ran like horses, like deer                                                                                  We ambled like bears, trotted like wolves

And our ears flicked and our eyes scanned the Sky                                                               Looking for the eagle above                                                                                                    And we scanned the Land for the fox below                                                                                                     And the otters in the River                                                                                                                            And the great whales in the Sea.

We were the last to appear.  All things already had their place,                                                                              All animals their dens,                                                                                                                             Their burrows, their nests, their webs,                                                                                      Their thickets, meadows, eyries,                                                                                             Their tall grasses, cliffs, tide pools... 

We are afraid now.                                                                                                                                    They have no need of us,                                                                                                             Of our furniture, our silverware, our machinery,                                                                       All our clothes, our great many shoes, stacks of paper,                                                                            Our complicated credit and debt..

Our obligations to a Great Society                                                                                                           Which seems to float further and further away from us                                                                        Shining in all its complicated architecture                                                                                 And irremediable components.

When I was young I was romantic about the Land.                                                                   I tried to live there, houseless and penniless, no car, no address,                                                No job..                                                                                                                                      No friends either.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          It proved itself too much for me.

But I have not forgotten the Dream.  

I too love the free life,                                                                                                                  I can envision it as seamless, where we fit,                                                                           Properly, ingeniously, wonderfully in the palm of Nature's Land.                                                                   But I may never know what it truly is, this time.  

We are not beneficial yet.

There is a deep understanding, where fear is more akin to awe.                                                                Perfect love has something to do with knowing                                                                                 Who you are and where you truly belong.

In the end, this body belongs to the Land, and my Heart is content with that.  

Friday April 9th 2021. Dear Diary

 Hi Lisa!


I've been ferrying my dad around to Dr. Appointments and spending whole days checking in with the pharmacy to pick up that prescription that will be ready "in about an hour" or so, running around doing errands, pickup and dropoff, and such. Safeway, being "short-handed" in the pharmacy, has a substitute which is the phone, where you cannot leave a message.  So I can't reach a Real Person by phone and must Drive Over to see IF it's ready YET.  My poor dad has been by turns grumpy, over confident, confused, deflated, alarmed, apologetic, and telling jokes.  He's had a sudden go around with a UTI and his usual cavalier attitude has had a real workout.   First round of antibiotics and probiotics have not cleared the infection, so, round two.  I'm on call.  I'm making him dinner tomorrow night since Wednesday was a wash.. 

I had no idea I could lose so much time trying to be efficient, hahahaha!

Anyway, the week has been a cluster fuck.  My desperate goal for today is to make some kind of sense out of the living/dining room and kitchen, which have started to sink under all the detritus, icons and artifacts of Doug's and my Past Lives, exhumed from the drying barn which Doug wants to start working on, and closets and bookshelves.  

All my own appointments have either cancelled or been moved, at least once.  I missed my chiropractor appointment which is too long a story.. I stopped at the library yesterday to drop off and pickup, and managed to leave them with my driver's license.  They called, so I KNOW where it is.  

And that's just on the local scene.  Anyway, I hope the dust settles.  I have almost no Hospice clients Thank God and I'm hoping next week will be a little less frenetic and I can visit you without twitching  hahahahahah

I did get the 12-step book by J B Peterson, it looks pretty interesting; the introduction by Dr. Doige has captured me so I'm optimistic that I may even be able to read the book.

❤  Sidney




Thursday, February 11, 2021

Ain't No Ash Will Burn Feb 11 2021

                                             Aint No Ash Will Burn; Feb 11 2021



My first husband seduced me away from my boyfriend with flattery and good treatment.  Handsome, a Bass player musician, off the road now; he wanted me to love him, and I was willing, after two weeks, to say yes to his proposal.  Soon after, unremarkably in hindsight, what I’d signed up for began to manifest.

His disappearance.  A call saying he’d had to spend the night in jail.  I, often not knowing where the heck he was.  


Remarkable stories from him about his life in Vietnam, (Don’t ever wake me up from a sound sleep.  Call to me from the doorway or I might try to kill you.)  His musical touring with a band, and conquests; suspicious notes left in windows from ?? That he wouldn’t let me see.  Admission from him that he was a “Stud” meaning, evidently, that many women were wanting him.


Later, an heirloom ring from my grandmother disappeared.  After that, he borrowed an amplifier which inexplicably had to be sold.


I was not a good cook.  Nor was I a good house keeper.  He did try to improve me. He had convinced me to move out of my small apartment in a big house, and to rent a small house in the middle of strangers far from friends and family.  Later, into the town where he worked.  I got a job.  I became pregnant.  He asked me to get an abortion, and when I couldn’t do it, he said he wanted me to have the baby.


About that time I found out he had a (new) girlfriend.  I had seen her at a gig, once, before the shit hit the fan.  She was a tiny, skinny, mousey looking woman who none-the-less wore chains across her belly and knew the moves.  She was dancing with a man who looked tired and rather sad, but who obviously adored her.  He was her match; a good pairing I thought, with some rue, since my pairing was beginning to tarnish.  Soon enough I realized she and my husband were “an item,” when I found his sides and back scored with nail scratches. 


At some later gig I accosted her in the lady’s room.  

“You’re his wife?”  she said, uncertain first, followed by an incredulous “You’re pregnant?”

“Three months,” I replied, pushing her dawning awareness.   

“Oh!  He didn’t tell me.”  Oh, surprise.  Oh, the torment.  Women, kept in the dark.  She was in despair, vulnerable, ambivalent, but hoping to see me out of the picture, saying wretchedly, “I love him.”  



The official story from my husband was a huge lie about him having a previous relationship with her and her having a baby by him.  Unbelievable, but I did want to believe it, in spite of what was plain to see.  She was going to give him the child if he would live with them for some (unspecified and increasingly long) time. Complicated, right?  He moved in with her, in a city about an hour away.   


So while I was stranded, pregnant, in a town with no car, in economic hard times that resulted in me being laid off the week before Christmas, my husband was in another woman’s bed.  I never saw another nickel from him.  


I managed to find another job and rig up a ride to and from.  My husband would swing by frequently to “check up” on me, which basically meant to see if I was still captive.  Every week, the same impotent promise.  “I’ll come back home on Friday.”  Friday, “I’ll come back home on Monday.”  At that time, there was really no option for me but to stay where I was.


And then, I began passing clots.  Quarter sized clots.  My OBGYN made me quit work and told me to stay in bed.  That was problematic, eh? No friends, no family, no money, no nuthin. Welfare was not available to me at that time because I was just pregnant, not a mother with a child.   


My grandmother Harriet wrote me a letter telling me she was moving back to Connecticut; and with that I finally broke my own silence and told her everything that had happened to me.  When she arrived, we settled in a small rental and she literally spoon fed me from April to July, when I had my son.  I can honestly say that Harriet, and having that baby, saved me.


But the drama continued for another year before I gained the understanding to cut the connection with the man.  


Flattery, followed by the best treatment, followed by infractions, supported with lies, undermined by theft and blatant betrayal..  


After the honeymoon it was flattery, which didn’t work, followed by promises never fulfilled, followed by threats, followed by physical abuse. Fortunately for me, when he once slammed me against a wall, it made me furious, and that surprised him, and he backed down. He continued to try to talk me away from the truth, to silence my rebuttals, to bend me to his will.  It was two years of living in dread and suspicion, and finally, catching him in his lie irrefutably.  Even then, I had to stand up to him repeatedly, and finally, disconnect.  Refuse his phone calls.  Cut him off entirely.  And nowhere in this time did he evidence any concern for the child other than to try to use him as a bargaining chip.  I was on Welfare by that time.  I learned that some relationships can't be fixed.

 

Under the circumstances, the divorce was quick and easy. My husband didn’t show up.  "Your Honor, he left when I got pregnant, and hasn’t contributed to my support since." My defense.   Judgement: ~ "Divorce granted."  Gavel hits the desk. 


Once we were divorced I found out from the local band members he played with that he was a heroin addict.  He swallowed all the baggage of the whole “musician stud” thing alright.  In retrospect, I’m sure he had PTSD, because the one conversation we did have about his time in Nam, he mentioned that half the men in his group killed were killed by “friendly fire.”  I’m sorry for him. It's impossible to integrate these realities of war.  It doesn’t explain the threats of violence against me and my grandmother, the show-off attempt to kidnap my child, (I met his bluff, and he backed down) or the threats of driving his car into our living room, or mailing letters to all my friends and letters to say it was MY fault that he commits suicide..) 


My first husband already had been married and divorced twice to the same woman, and had six children by her.  He had one by me and at least one by his new wife, the Girlfriend.  I have wondered how many others there really are.  The Girlfriend would call me occasionally because he "hasn't come home yet."  She’d be frantic, calling everywhere to find him.  I didn’t envy her.  I could not imagine being a police dog in a relationship.  He broke her wrist once, and blacked her eye another time.  


Thirteen years later I had to find him so my second husband could legally adopt my child.  I hoped my ex would have collected himself by that time, maybe, apologize for what he’d put me through, but no, what he did was declare his undying love for me, and that he’d leave his girlfriend/now wife in an instant if I asked, he thought about me all the time yada yada yada.  I couldn’t believe my ears.  It so insulted my sense of honor and decency that all I could say was “Over my dead body.”


That was the epitaph on the tombstone of our relationship.  


For certain, now, I recognize the signs of that predator.  We’ve had one in the presidential office of the United States.  He calls himself the 45th President, like, he’s the last one we’ll ever have.  But of course, his infidelity gives him eyes for every other woman; to become the emperor of the world.  Flattery, flash, big promises (impotent) followed by bigger lies that people swallow like pudding, and when that doesn’t get him what he wants, insults Then, slander, veiled threats,  and “You’re fired.” “Something bad might happen to you.” One “spouse” must be loyal to the death, and the other may philander at will.  Abuse of the worst kind, to those who have (naively) given their trust and their commitment to one who will never return the actions of the vow and doesn’t know love.  And if this doesn’t satisfy, recruiting violence against his “opponents” from people he will scrape off the bottom of his shoes.


My first husband just found me on facebook through old mutual musician friends.  He wanted me to befriend him on facebook.  I spent some time looking at his facebook page. Remarkably he is apparently still with the Girlfriend/Wife and in their photo they both look happy.  He has a grand daughter.  He has Christian friends. He even makes a few sort of Christian comments.  I didn’t see any of the children from his first marriage listed as friends on facebook, but I didn’t look too long.  Seeing his photo and reading his page brought the whole thing back to me, in living emotional color.   What could he possibly want?  Why on earth request to be friends?  Some curiosity?  Some hope? Some repentance?


I rode that unruly horse over night, and miraculously, in the morning, explained in a brief sentence to the mutual friend by whom we were connected that I would not be a facebook friend with my first husband, and, no offense, might have to block the mutual friend as well.  He understood.  I blocked my first husband and the storm went away.  


Right now, the Senate is sitting in trial of impeachment for Donald Trump.  The Republicans are in turmoil; some of them with arms crossed and eyes stubbornly on the table, others making notes, later many saying “We will acquit.”  They may, but I won’t.  I will excuse myself from having anything to do with political predators who are addicted, traumatized, victimized, and captivated by big lies, by accusing their “enemies” of doing the very thing they are doing themselves, by being willing to resort to violence against anyone, even their own, when lies and flattery don’t work, and by insisting they have the right to determine which votes count and which votes must be overturned, which people may be considered True Citizens, and which people must be Silenced.   I am sorry for them.  But they too have overturned my trust, and I will not go back to to the ashes of their betrayals.





Saturday, December 19, 2020

The Pure Truth December 11th 2020 by Sidney Barthell

 

  The Pure Truth December 11th 2020


My days of perfection have come to an end

Which is not to say I have become perfected

Rather,

The days of perfecting have ended

And now I am as I am.


There is a time for purification

You follow the prescriptions as well as you can

But then there is the moment of truth

God says to you,

"If you are not pure by this time...."

And you say to God

"I am as is."

The honest moment

When you trust, and God adores.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Modron Sept 23 2017

 Work from the ground, Modron

That is where you begin

The ground

From which everything else rises in its time.


Rise, this is the way of things

Rise to the light

As many times as we fall to the ground

In our ruins.