Candy and Poison

Halloween Haiku
Such little steps
In love of candy
Knocking at my door!

by student,
Patrick McDonough
Community College
of Philadelphia
Fall 1997







Read Margaret Atwood's collection of very short stories, entitled Murder in the Dark, and you'll soon see that there's more to Halloween than Honeydukes. In "Making Poison," for example, it turns out that life is not all Tom, Betty, and Susan after all. I wonder if Dick and Jane would ever make poison, like the brother and sister in Atwood's story? Even Atwood wonders:

"Why did we make the poison in the first place? I can remember the glee with which we stirred and added, the sense of magic and accomplishment. Making poison is as much fun as making a cake. People like to make poison. If you don't understand this you will never understand anything" (Atwood 10).

FOR MORE ON MARGARET ATWOOD'S SPOOKY SHORT FICTION
READ TODAY'S NEW POST ON MY FORTNIGHTLY BLOG:

KITTI CARRIKER: A FORTNIGHTLY LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE
www.kitticarriker.blogspot.com

Aubergine

Eggplants from Gerry's Garden
(also zucchini, green peppers, green tomato)

This is my favorite vegetable bowl. It has held twenty summers's worth of produce and still looks just as bright as shiny as it did back when we received it as a wedding present from our friends and dear neighbors Dot & Ted. All the decorative vegetables painted on the bowl are so cute, but see the darling little eggplant? Isn't it the cutest!

I don't know of many eggplants in literature, but there is an unforgettably sly image in True Stories by Margaret Atwood. She describes the furtive yet blatant behavior of a man who is suspected of killing his wife while on vacation in Spain:

" . . . in Barcelona not Madrid. So they're there and he's here and naturally they want him to go over, for questioning they say, and naturally he won't. He says he doesn't need the distress all over again. I'll bet. Not that I would either if I was him. I saw him in the supermarket last week. He was holding an eggplant and he said, 'Aubergine, it's a much better word don't you think?' He was running his fingers over the purple skin. He hasn't changed a bit."

from True Romances #1
in True Stories [a collection of poetry and very short stories]
by Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
Canadian poet, novelist, essayist

*******************
Here is a timely poem from the same book:
High Summer

High summer,
our lives here winding down.

Why are we building fences?
There's nothing we can keep out.

Wild mustard, hornworms, cutworms
push at the edges of this space

it's taken eight years to clear.
The fields, lush green and desolate

as promises, are still pretending
to be owned. Nothing

is owned, not even the graves
across the road with the names

so squarely marked.
Goodbye, we credit

the apple trees, dead
and alive, with saying.

They say no such thing.

~ Margaret Atwood

Lovely But Not Quite Ripe
In vain, have we attempted to own this peach tree
in our backyard, but it is not even pretending!

Witness is What You Must Bear

Many moons ago (1981) I had the good fortune to hear Margaret Atwood read from her work in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the continued good fortune that same evening to attend the after - party at the home of poet Carolyn Forché.

The focus of Atwood's reading was her collection True Stories. During that intense hour, the segments that she read aloud were seared into my memory, ranging from the five wry "True ~ Romances" to the harrowing six - part poem dedicated to Carolyn Forché's resistance work in El Salvador (1978 - 1980) and her subsequent book of poems The Country Between Us.

A couple of misguided articles have recently interpreted Atwood's poem as a commentary on life in 21st Century Canada; but, no, this eye - opening and heart - breaking sequence honors Forché's work as a journalist during the Salvadoran Civil War:

Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never Be Written
For Carolyn Forché

I
This is the place
you would rather not know about,
this is the place that will inhabit you,
this is the place you cannot imagine,
this is the place that will finally defeat you

where the word why shrivels and empties
itself. This is famine.

II
There is no poem you can write
about it, the sandpits
where so many were buried
& unearthed, the unendurable
pain still traced on their skins.

This did not happen last year
or forty years ago but last week.
This has been happening,
this happens.

We make wreaths of adjectives for them,
we count them like beads,
we turn them into statistics & litanies
and into poems like this one.

Nothing works.
They remain what they are.

III
The woman lies on the wet cement floor
under the unending light,
needle marks on her arms put there
to kill the brain
and wonders why she is dying.

She is dying because she said.
She is dying for the sake of the word.
It is her body, silent
and fingerless, writing this poem.

IV
It resembles an operation
but it is not one

nor despite the spread legs, grunts
& blood, is it a birth.

Partly it’s a job
partly it’s a display of skill
like a concerto.

It can be done badly
or well, they tell themselves.
Partly it’s an art.

V
The facts of this world seen clearly
are seen through tears;
why tell me then
there is something wrong with my eyes?

To see clearly and without flinching,
without turning away,
this is agony, the eyes taped open
two inches from the sun.

What is it you see then?
Is it a bad dream, a hallucination?
Is it a vision?
What is it you hear?

The razor across the eyeball
is a detail from an old film.
It is also a truth.
Witness is what you must bear.

VI
In this country you can say what you like
because no one will listen to you anyway,
it’s safe enough, in this country you can try to write
the poem that can never be written,
the poem that invents
nothing and excuses nothing,
because you invent and excuse yourself each day.

Elsewhere, this poem is not invention.
Elsewhere, this poem takes courage.
Elsewhere, this poem must be written
because the poets are already dead.

Elsewhere, this poem must be written
as if you are already dead,
as if nothing more can be done
or said to save you.

Elsewhere you must write this poem
because there is nothing more to do.

Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
Canadian essayist, novelist, poet
More from True Stories

To learn more about Carolyn Forche's work in El Salvador,
please read her poems from 1982: The Country Between Us;
and her memoir (2019): What You Have Heard is True.

As one amazon reviewer of Forche's El Salvador poetry says: "Like Cassandra, Forché has been relegated to the realm of the unheard prophet who could have prevented the current (2018) tragic spectacle of the U.S. running concentration camps for migrant children."

My heroic friend Kathleen O'Gorman has spent the past year traveling from Illinois to Texas, talking to migrant children in government custody, documenting and bearing witness; she responds: "Interestingly, I have found, as I anticipate talks with different groups about my experiences at the border, I often think of the opening line of Forché’s “The Colonel”: 'What you have heard is true.' How horrifying that her frame of reference, El Salvador in 1978, resonates in any way with our present-day realities."

The Colonel
What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried
a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On
the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot
said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some
of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the
ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. ~ May 1978

Carolyn Forché (b 1950)
American human rights advocate, poet, professor
Carolyn reading aloud

Shortness, Darkness, Coldness

" . . . The year
isn't a clear circle or some
dream of a clock but one shadowy
moment after the next. . . ."

Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
from her sequence "Small Poems for the Winter Solstice: #14"
in her book True Stories (p 39)
which also contains her poem "Christmas Carols" (pp 56 - 57)
See also fb / "Winter Vacations"

Solstice

Each year, on the same date, the summer solstice comes.
Consummate light: we plan for it,
the day we tell ourselves
that time is very long indeed, nearly infinite.
And in our reading and writing, preference is given
to the celebratory, the ecstatic.

There is in these rituals something apart from wonder:
there is also a kind of preening,
as though human genius has participated in these arrangements
and we found the results satisfying.

What follows the light is what precedes it:
the moment of balance, of dark equivalence.

But tonight we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs
so late into the evening -
why should we look either forward or backwards?
Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes genius to forget these things.

by Louise Gluck (1943 -2023)
from The Seven Ages
more on QK & FN & fb

“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun,
its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking,
where the past lets go and becomes the future."

Margaret Atwood
from her poem "Winter Vacations"

Like the Parts You Don't Like

One of my favorite lines of fictional dialogue (see column at right) is from one of Margaret Atwood's cynical little "True Romances." The main character laments that her bad boyfriend has left her, and now she has "nothing to live for." Her level - headed friend asks, "Were you living for him when he was here?" And the distressed one says, "No . . . I was living in spite of him, I was living against him." The wise friend concludes, "Then you should say, I have nothing to live against."

I do recall applying this lesson during my early Philadelphia years, back when I was trying to improve my urban attitude. Thinking of Atwood's story, I told myself, "You need to give up living against the city! You have nothing to live against." But it's such a bad habit with me, it seems that I will try to live against almost anything! The weather, the grocery store, the holiday season, organized religion, centuries of misogynism -- you name it; unless I consciously stop myself, I will try to live against it. And how does one little person live against an entire city or an entire cosmos or an entire family? Not only is it impossible, it is just not necessary to do so, even if it does feel so at times.

Nothing to live against. Brian Andreas makes a similar suggestion in one of his stories: "It's much easier, he told me, if you like the parts you like & you like the parts you don't like. Is that some Eastern thing? I said & he said not really since he was from Idaho & it worked there just fine" (from StoryPeople).

Still I wonder, how do you really learn to "like the parts you don't like"? How do you learn to say, "Oh well," if that's what the occasion calls for, to be dismissive, remain impassive, impersonal, detached? For a Doubting Thomasina, a Daughter of Descartes, a Western Girl With Glasses, it's not always easy.

These ramblings are drawn from my recent post
"Nothing to Live Against"
@ KITTI CARRIKER: A FORTNIGHTLY LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE

All Saints: Atwood & Auntie Wickie

Pop - Up Shadow Card from Auntie Wickie

True Stories #ii

The true story was lost
on the way down to the beach, it's something

I never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light

my blurred footprints
filling with salt

water, this handful
of tiny bones, this owl's kill;

a moon, crumpled papers, a coin,
the glint of an old picnic,

the hollows made by lovers
in a sand a hundred

years ago: no clue.

**********

" . . . something
I never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light . . ."

"I can fly. I wish I could believe it."

**********

Also, including this one here;
can't wait for the December!

Small Poems for the Winter Solstice #10

Of course I'm a teller
of mundane lines, such as: I'll try
never to lie to you. Such as:
the day after today the earth will
tilt on its axis towards the sun
again, the light will turn stronger,
it will be spring and you'll
be happy. Such as:
I can fly. I wish I could believe
it. Instead I'm stuck
here, in this waste of particulars,
truths, fact. Teeth, gloves & socks.
I don't trust love
because it's no shape or colour.

both poems by Margaret Atwood
from True Stories

Snowy Halloween ~ Sunny All Saints


And a closing quote for Auntie Wickie:
"Oh Lord [Oh Goddess]!
Into what an age have you caused me to be born!"
from Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

Autumn Light

" . . . the October
angle of the yellow light, the heart-mangling intensities of the season."

from The Corrections
(p 315)
by Jonathan Franzen
(b 1959)
Contemporary American
Novelist &
Essayist









"It was the middle of October. The summer heat had long departed, the trees were shedding their leaves fast, the sky had an appearance of coming wind and showers; the great stretch of moorland which could be seen best in winter when the oaks and elms were bare, was distinctly visible. The moor had broad shadows on it, also tracts of intense light; the bracken was changing from green to brown and yellow color -- brilliant color was everywhere. At this time of year the moors in many ways looked their best." *

from Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl (p 140)
by L. T. Meade
(pseudonym of Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith, 1854-1914)
Prolific Writer of Girls' Stories
Born in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland.

*I'd say true of most places! Certainly true of Philadelphia (see photo above).

As for any former controversy surrounding The Corrections, who cares about the brou-ha-ha with Oprah's Book Club? Just read this fabulous, comprehensive novel for all the beautiful and beautifully accurate descriptions of Philadelphia, if nothing else! Whenever I read Franzen -- same goes for Margaret Atwood & Margaret Drabble -- I feel I'm reading words that will be going down in history, words written by some of our greatest living authors.

Bread Loaf vs Bread Stick

Yes, the bread machine
yields amazing results every time!
My only luck with yeast breads is in the
machine, which is nearly foolproof!

Now, if only writing were as easy as making bread! For anyone who's every been frustrated by a writers' workshop experience, here's a funny old essay that always makes me laugh. Some of the references are dated but still humorous, I think. I recently came across my ancient paper copy and realized that this piece is rather hard to find online, so here ya go, for educational purposes only:

THE BREAD STICK WRITERS' CONFERENCE
By Dick Teresi
August 10, 2001 ~ Wall Street Journal

"I arrived at Sid's, my favorite coffeehouse, to find the owner shooing everyone away. "Emergency renovation," Sid shouted. Then, under his breath, he muttered something about "damn health department" and "anthrax." Sid's is the down-market caffeine hangout, the salon of choice for nonfiction writers and nontenured faculty in the college town where I live. The clientele sit at plywood tables eating smuggled Tastee Cakes to avoid spending money on Sid's pastries. We are a shabby lot, the most frequent ambient expressions being "kill fee" and "damn, another postdoc appointment."

"I steeled myself and timidly crept uptown to Starbuck's. There I applied for a loan on a watered-down latte and tried to nibble a "fresh-baked" biscotti that was inexplicably shrink-wrapped. It had the tensile strength of Kevlar.

"That was hardly the problem. The problem was the three youths, dressed in black, at the adjacent table who discussed their coming fiction-writing camps in New England. While I attempted to write an article, armed only with a Staples 89-cent notebook and a Bic, the three artistes pulled $4,000 Titanium PowerBooks with wireless modems from their tote bags and flipped up 15-inch screens to view their latest poems. I couldn't concentrate as the trio spoke loudly about "the death of magical realism," "postmodern relativism," "narrative arc" and "Daddy's new yacht."

"I was filled with loathing but, frankly, yearning too. I want to go to summer camp and write fiction. I want to write about Truth without having to gather facts. About Beauty and still have enough money left for liposuction. I want to go to a place where writing doesn't mean conducting interviews, searching through archives or hiring a libel lawyer.

"I scurried home and logged on. There was Bread Loaf, of course, at Middlebury College in Vermont every August. Barry "Arctic Dreams" Lopez is the headliner this year, no doubt nurturing a new generation of precipitation writers who wish to venture beyond rain to wax rhapsodic about snow, too, as well as sleet, hail and, possibly, for the advanced, "wintry mix."

"My hard drive lacked the memory to download the resumes of the entire faculty, their lengthy lists of prizes evoking "Memory Low! Please Quit Other Applications!" warnings from my computer. Chaucer, Shakespeare and Yeats together never won as many prizes as a single teacher at Bread Loaf. But then, the PEN Award for Outstanding Poetry Concerning Acid Reflux by Writers Temporarily Detained at O'Hare wasn't available in their day.

"I would give my last five kill fees to attend a 12-day session at Bread Loaf. In fact, it costs five kill fees to attend a 12-day session -- about $1,800, more than the combined royalties of all the poets who teach there. For $1,800 I could spend a week at the Chelsea Hotel with Margaret Atwood and still have money left over for room service. Other belle lettres programs were similarly pricey.

"Why does it cost so much to become a starving poet? What the world needs is writing camps for the budget-minded. Here is a proposed catalog.

"Misery and Memoir: The Belle Lettres of Poverty. Directors: Frank and Malachy McCourt. Location: the slums of Limerick. If you're not sick, alcoholic and near death, you're not writing yet. Participants will be taught how to affect long-suffering yet stoical facial expressions for the lecture circuit. Fees, exclusive of boat fare, are modest. Meals: infrequent. Accommodations: may be drafty or flooded. Bring your own potatoes.

"What the Hell Is Going on Here? Learning to Trust the Unreliable Narrator. Director: Kazuo Ishiguro. Location: ? Mr. Ishiguro will send you five sets of directions to the campus written by five different narrators, only one of whom is reliable. Those who actually reach the site may or may not receive instruction. Payment due in advance.

"Realism and the Vietnam War Novel. Director: Joseph Ellis. Location: anywhere safe. Learn how to give your war novel verisimilitude by avoiding common mistakes. For example, the Viet Cong are referred to as "Charlie," never "Charles." And it's LST, not SUV. Mr. Ellis has slashed this year's fees from those set last year by Oliver Stone. The helicopter field trip to the Mekong Delta has been replaced by a Peter Pan Bus tour of West Point. Vietnam vets need not apply.

"Dueling Sisters: Sibling Rivalry and the Modern Family Saga. Directors: A.S. Byatt and Margaret Drabble. Location: simultaneous courses in two separate but equal B&Bs in the U.K. Two-fer literature at its best. Come with a sister or brother you despise and you pay tuition for only one! How you split the fee is up to you. Instructors not available for mediation.

"Less Is More: The Very Very Short Story. Director: J.D. Salinger. Location: New Hampshire. Your teacher shares his experience of four decades of not writing. What subjects to avoid (all of them). Choosing a voice (silent). How even personal letters can get you into trouble. Students are afforded copious free time. Laptops, pencils, paper are not required.

"Hey, I Wrote a Book! And I Didn't Even Break a Nail! Director: Hillary Clinton (management reserves the right to substitute ghost instructors). Location: not in the Senate cafeteria, that's for sure. A course in the selection, maintenance and subsequent disposal of ghostwriters. For example, can you feed your ghost the same tuna salad you made for the cleaning lady or should you add some chopped scallions? How to thwart pesky talk-show hosts who insist on asking you questions about the content of your book.

"Imagery and Incarceration: The Poetry of Maximum Security. Directors: Slammo and Snake. Location: Attica. A man can't write free verse if he's free. Students read their poems aloud every noon in the yard over by the bench press. No tuition -- just commit a class A felony. No work-release wannabes, please.

Finding (and Losing) Your Voice in the Political Novel. Director: Anonymous. Location: Joe Klein's apartment. How making readers guess who you are can make them think you're somebody more famous than you really are. Students will spend 12 days pondering the identity of their absent teacher. In his keynote address, Mr. Klein will deny that he's running the program. Make checks payable to "Joe Klein."

"Memoirmania: The Violent Art of Autobiography. Directors: World Wrestling Federation authors Mankind, The Rock and Chyna. Location: Hartford Civic Center. Instruction in the use of steroids and Vicodin to achieve a beefier yet painless prose style. No tuition is charged, but students meet teachers in a course-ending, Texas steel-cage death match on Pay-Per-View.

"Uptown Office, Downtown Advance: Writing to Pay Off Your Legal Bills. Director: Bill Clinton. Location: Harlem (or Chappaqua when Hillary's away). Payment? Get details from Monica. May not be suitable for male writers."

********************************************
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All Rights Reserved.

What Women [Don't] Want

Awhile back I heard a very good sermon about the "middle way being the hard way." The old proverb (certainly what I was taught in Sunday School) is that the middle way is for lazy opportunists who can't commit and want it both ways and haven't given their hearts to God. But this speaker was saying the opposite -- that the extremes are easier because they require less introspection, less observation, less compassion. The middle way is hard because it demands all of these things, and that's why the church should walk the middle path.

Around the same time, I also heard a very troubling sermon about abortion. What would Jesus do? Maybe he'd choose a different topic. All I could think was "Here we go again." It's bad enough on the television and in the House and in the Senate and every where else you turn your head, but even from the pulpit? When will it ever be considered unacceptable to violate the sanctuary of women? When will male ministers and lawmakers ever stop singling women out and talking about their bodies -- the very essence of objectification. Did Jesus do that? I don't think so. Being pitied and talked about like case studies -- this turns women into objects. The assumption that someone else can know which women need abortions and for what reasons -- this turns women into objects. What about self - determination? What about getting to be the subject of your own sentence?

I wince at the harsh pronouncements against all abortion, but I'm also suspicious of the so - called more generous stance that we have to consider the special cases of rape and incest. The unctuous reliance on this cliche fills me with dismay. What it says to me is that the church doesn't really want to help women but it will if it has to in the extreme case. The incest / rape exception makes me feel uneasy, not because it isn't valid or necessary, but because it's someone else's arbitrary decision, and a very harsh one at that, despite being presented in the name of compassion. Instead, how about acknowledging that the issue is too complicated for the existing exceptions and rules (the very thing that Jesus says NOT to rely on).

For those who claim the right to decide not only for themselves but for others, I want to hear their plans for helping expectant mothers who are carrying their children in fear, worried about money, health, nutrition, insurance, education, emotional support, rent, mortgage, heat, abuse, neglect -- and myriad other issues that we cannot possibly know in full, different in every case. How do these right - to - lifers plan to help care for each and every child who is born to a distraught mother? I want to see their directives and budget allotments for welcoming every newborn and nurturing every mother and every child. And I don't mean a cute hat and some diapers -- I mean non-stop tending until that child is safely through college.

There was one spark of hope in the sermon: the observation that, yes, you might meet a woman thirty years on who regretted her decision to terminate a pregnancy but on the other hand --

Okay, at this point I thought I was going to hear that you might also meet a woman who was relieved that she had the option to choose. But NO!

-- on the other hand -- there has to be help for college girls who get drunk and end up pregnant.

Some abortions end in regret; some begin in drunkenness. Thus did the sermon, which I did not find to be particularly helpful to women, come to a close. No acknowledgement that not all abortions begin in drunkenness or end in regret, no other examples, no mention of a considered choice, no middle path. Did it help anyone to make women sound so pathetic, to second guess their decisions, to sensationalize their distress with descriptions of crying and bleeding, to omit the possibility that women might know their own bodies and their own minds? No, it did not. It was offensive. Women don't need pity; they need a level playing field. Women resent the weary sexist conclusion that abortion is fair game for sermonizing -- because it's such an attention grabber. In fact, it's just one more way of putting women on that old familiar pedestal and looking up their dresses. How long, O Lord?

If human anatomy and physiology is sermon material, then lets move away from the insulting cliches about female reproduction and pick some topics that affect both sexes equally. Take colonoscopy, for instance. There's something that both men and women have to go through. Everyone has to have a first one sometime and no one wants to. You don't see much of a spiritual context to the colonoscopy? Well, then, give it one! I have lots of ideas: How about the low success rate of trying to make other people do the right thing? How about leading a horse to water but not being able to make it drink? How about not even being able to lead it to water? How about responsibility? How about worry? How about fear? How about violation and taboo? How about people dying unnecessarily of colon cancer? As you can see, it wouldn't take me long to write a sermon on the topic! In fact, I think there's a veritable mission field out there of people who need to hear the message and be brought into the fold.

Or what about whole body screenings for cancer of the skin -- our body's largest organ! That affects everybody. God made the sun. Right?

How about the need for free STD testing at all college and university health centers? I don't know the cost, but some students find any fee at all prohibitive and / or embarrassing if they have to file an insurance claim. Maybe free STD testing is not an ENTITLEMENT in this country; however, if we take a look at the big picture instead of the small, we might see that free testing helps EVERYONE on campus, not just those who come in for a lab test or an exam. Who knows, a more generous policy might result in safer sex and fewer abortions.

I'm not necessarily suggesting these as ideal topics for Sunday morning, but then I wouldn't pick abortion either. Or if I did, I'd ask why the discussion of unplanned pregnancy is so one - sided. Little is ever said about the man who participated in the conception. I rarely hear any presumptuous suggestions or patronizing restrictions concerning what he should do next, now that he has fertilized a human egg. Where is the analysis of male anatomy and the massively hurtful potential of testosterone? I'd point out that a great many of the "birth control failures" that girls and women take responsibility for (sometimes by terminating a pregnancy) actually boil down to having been relentlessly pressured into having unprotected sex. Could women insist on birth control every time unless they want a child? Yes, of course they could and should. But that still doesn't explain why the men who love (?) them are pressuring them in the first place. Men and boys -- Stop. Doing. This. Make yourself part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Of course we have compassion for victims of rape, incest, and drunken mistakes -- those are the extremes; those are crimes! The difficult thing -- apparently! -- is compassion for normal women leading normal lives that become complicated because the biological odds are stacked against them in such a way that women bear the biological risk for both recreational and procreational sex. What saddens me -- besides having to hear a discussion better left to me and my doctor or me and my girlfriends or me and my husband -- is to hear a public speaker take the predictable political path, in the name of "socio - cultural relevance" or "ethics" instead of a soul - searching, sermon - worthy middle path.

Even some of my favorite writers seem at times to get it weirdly wrong. In Margaret Atwood's novel Surfacing (1972), for instance, the narrator becomes obsessed with the feral conception of a child in reparation for a previous pregnancy that her art professor pressured her into terminating. The new child, conceived in the wild, will be a living apology to the unrealized child. In Ruth Ozeki's novel All Over Creation (2003), a similar irrational, formulaic approach is expressed by the high school history teacher, twenty - five years after his affair with a fourteen - year - old student: "We took a life, Yumi. From the universe. And the way I figure it, we owe one back. Life is sacred. I want to make amends. . . . I want us to have a child (386). Yumi, who has returned to town for a visit, along with her three children, says oddly and crassly of them: "Three wonderful grandchildren ought to more than make up for one lousy abortion" (240).

What's going on here? Must these women be forever making amends? Are they never allowed to leave mistakes in the past, to grow and learn, to pay the price of experience and move on, sadder perhaps but wiser? How about the creation of heroines who gain dignity and emotional maturity, confident in their choices and the points to which they've come? Instead, first Atwood and then Ozeki (writing three decades later!) use their characters to express the view that abortion goes hand in hand with shame, guilt, bitterness and perpetual indebtedness to the universe. In each case I remain mystified by the author's placement of her heroine on such a regressive life path.

A more supportive and realistic view appears in Curtis Sittenfeld's novel American Wife (2008). Unlike Atwood's extreme reversion to nature or Ozeki's tone of self - deprecation, Sittenfeld allows her narrator, Alice to think rationally and walk the middle path: " . . . my entire political outlook could have been summarized by the statement that I felt bad for poor people and was glad abortion had become legal. . . . I live a life that contains contradictions. Don't you?" (204, 473).

Yes, I do.

***************

Additional Reading:
Reality Check
Thriftshop Barbie
Comments on Facebook
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Seated Woman in a Red Dress, 1920s
By Irish Painter ~ Roderic O'Conor, 1860 - 1940

Don't Ruin My Birthday!

A Chocolate Cheesecake for Ben ~ June 2, 2005

From My Calendar of Everyday Custom & Ceremony

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Because my happiness was based on external measures —
on tasks being completed, plans running accordingly,
goals being met, hairs being in place —
I was continually disappointed
— upset — impatient — and stressed."
Rachel Macy Stafford
from her article
"The Day My Child Lost Her Joy —
And What I Did to Revive It"

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Thanks to my friend Laura Thudium Zieglowsky for posting Rachel Macy Stafford's article, which is well worth reading no matter what the age of your loved ones. Whether or not you are surrounded by impressionable children, Stafford's points are well taken. I appreciate her observation that, yes, our moods and actions do indeed have an impact on others around us; and if we care about their feelings, we will modify our behavior accordingly. Easier said than done, however, when, rightly or wrongly, little things seem to matter so much: "I’m talking trivial, insignificant, minor inconveniences here, but that was the state of a distracted [or in my case at the time, pre-menopausal and strangely sad] woman who could no longer see the blessings, only the inconveniences, of her life."

Stafford's quest to revive her joy reminded me of my son Ben's 15th birthday (13 years ago!), when I went to pick the boys up from summer band and burst into tears because another mom had given me a mean scowl on the parking lot for being a bad driver. No one was hurt, no one's car was damaged, yet still I felt so shamed and stressed and worried that I could not stop crying to save my life (maybe because I took the scowl personally, and started hearing the tapes in my head: "you're so stupid, you don't belong here"). Why couldn't I just say, "Oh, well"?

I tried to proceed with my normal activities that afternoon, going home and making a cake, but crying all the while. Even an hour or so later, while Ben and Sam were in the study doing their homework and I was in the kitchen assembling Ben's favorite -- chocolate cheesecake -- I simply could not get a grip. Finally, Ben called in from the other room, "Mom, stop crying! You're ruining my birthday!" Now THAT was a wake-up call!

For more insights from Stafford and others,
including Margaret Atwood, Susan Jeffers, Hugh Prather,
and Nadia Bolz-Weber
and songs by Emmylou Harris, George Montgomery,
and Sir John Suckling
see my recent post

"Don't Ruin My Birthday"
@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence; custom & ceremony

Pale Battalions

The leaves are always doing something noteworthy
on Veterans Day ~ this year it was a snow show!*

In honor of the Armistice, I have looked up the following bleakly honest poem, new to me this year. A few lines are recited very briefly during a party scene in the 2017 movie (based on the novel by Penelope Fitzgerald), The Bookshop, in which a WWII widow finds a way to go on with her life:

A Sonnet [XXXIV]

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,
“Yet many a better one has died before.”
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook, None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895 - 1915)

And this one, suggested by my friend Bill McInerney

Two Sides Of War (All Wars)

All wars are planned by older men
In council rooms apart,
Who call for greater armament
And map the battle chart.

But out along the shattered field
Where golden dreams turn gray,
How very young the faces were
Where all the dead men lay.

Portly and solemn in their pride,
The elders cast their vote
For this or that, or something else,
That sounds the martial note.

But where their sightless eyes stare out
Beyond life's vanished toys,
I've noticed nearly all the dead
Were hardly more than boys.

Henry Grantland Rice (1880 – 1954)

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I always take a moment on Veterans Day to contemplate
Two Things I Will Never Understand:
War [Waste] and Littering.

Take these two patriots, for example;
which one sounds sane and which one sounds insane?

“Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor
shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.”
George S. Patton Jr. (1885 – 1945)
General of the United States Army in WW II

"Though I have been trained as a soldier,
and participated in many battles,
there never was a time when, in my opinion,
some way could not be found
to prevent the drawing of the sword.
I look forward to an epoch when a court,
recognized by all nations,
will settle international differences."
Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)
Commanding General of the United States Army, 1864 to 1865
18th President of the United States, 1869 - 1877

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I'm always highly suspicious of the war movie genre as well (and war video games). Is their goal really to teach about history or just a morbid interest in war re-encactment? I think the latter, as if somehow war is the pinnacle of human existence / achievement. I guess for some men, such as Patton, it is. God help him, indeed. So pathologically wrong.

" . . . something
I never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light . . ."
Margaret Atwood

All ~Hallowed~ Nativities

I love these Halloween - themed Nativities!
Because within every Holy Day resides
an intimation of all the others!

Holy Ghost!

Dia de los Muertos

For more almost but not quite ludicrous nativities
see my current posts
both of which deal with Margaret Atwood's
short story "The Resplendent Quetzel"

At the Heart of the Creche

At the Heart of the Well

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

Existential Crisis

Clock Face ~ Omni Shoreham ~ Washington DC

This really happened: At the Post Office, the line is long but only two cashiers are open, and both clerks have disappeared into the back room, so all the customers are just standing idly / oddly looking around. It's like a Bunuel film -- are we in charge now? Should I step behind the register and start helping people? How long will we all stand here with nothing happening? Existential Crisis!

Speaking of the Post Office, why not take a few moments to reread Eudora Welty's droll little story "Why I Live at the P.O."? [also, see earlier post]

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from The Journals of Andre Gide: "One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything and consequently get nothing. Each time I discover, and too late, that one thing had come to me while I was running after another."

Stephane Moses [writing about Kafka's Parables]: "Certain situations are so desperate that the only way to escape them is through total ingenuousness."

****************
Uh - oh, I've done it again, written down the passage but not the source. Does anyone recognize? If only I could remember who wrote these words . . .

"I devoted myself to my business to the best of my ability -- not taking much pleasure in it, but hoping by this semblance of work to give some stability to my disintegrated life.

Perhaps it was because the day had begun so badly that I felt so anguished. Oh, I thought, without doubt, everything in my life is falling to pieces. Nothing that my hand grasps can my hand hold."

Clock Face ~ Darling Harbor ~ Sydney, Australia
[And More!]

P.S.
Closing thought from Margaret Atwood:
" . . . The year
isn't a circle or some
dream of a clock but one shadowy
moment after the next. . . . "
~ see True Stories, p 31 ~

Reading the Obituaries

"True Romance #5"
in True Stories ~ by Margaret Atwood
I don't think about you as much as I ought to, I don't have to, you're there whether I think about you or not. Many people aren't.

When I do think about you it's not what you'd expect. I don't want to be with you: most of the time that would be an interruption for both of us. I like to consider you going about your routine. I think about you getting up, brushing your teeth, having breakfast [and reading the obituaries]. I vary the breakfasts, though I don't devise anything too fanciful for you, I stick to cornflakes, orange juice, eggs, things like that. No strawberries out of season. I find it soothing to think about you eating these mundane and in fact somewhat austere breakfasts. It makes me feel safe.

But why should you go on eating breakfast at the same time, in the same way, day after day, just so I will be able to feel safe? You're contented enough, true, but there must be more. I'm getting around to that. One of these mornings, when you reach the bottom of your cup, coffee or tea, it could be either, you will look and there will be a severed finger, bloodless, anonymous, a little signal of death sent to you from the foreign country where they grow such things. Or you will glance down at your egg, four minutes, sitting in its dish white and as yet uncracked and serene as ever, and sunlight will be coming out of it. But on second thought your coffee cup will be vacant and the egg, when you finally close your eyes and slice it open blindly with the edge of your spoon, will have nothing in it that is not ordinarily there. Then you will know that at last I have imagined you perfectly. (44)

Breakfast Pottery by Emma Bridgewater

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Previous March First Posts

2010: Kiss Me & Kiss Today & Dear March

2011: My Vegetable Love

2012: Love However Brief

2013: Beyond Ideas

2014: The First [Mild] Day of March

2015: Wind from a Leaf

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An Anne Taintor for Michael Lipsey!

Why Christmas is Weird for Girls

Cartoon by Janie Stapleton,
posted by Allison Rablee Bryant,
Thanks Nikki!

Reminds me of the Christmas Story, which I want to like, if only it did not include the unhelpful message that boys are more important than girls and that ideal motherhood involves bearing children without having sex. Sadly, these are not healthy concepts for girls and young women to carry into adulthood.

In her novel August is a Wicked Month, Edna O'Brien explains the damaging double standard: "The great brainwash began in childhood. Slipped in between the catechism advocating chastity for women was the secret message that a man and a man's body was the true and absolute propitation" (118 - 119).

In her poem "Christmas Carols," Margaret Atwood warns against the exclusivity of the Virgin Mary: "think twice . . .

before you . . . single out one girl to play
the magic mother, in blue
& white, up on that pedestal,
perfect & intact, distinct
from those who aren't. Which means
everyone else."

Virgin Mary on Amazon

Every year around this time, I have to ask myself, could we not have something a little more life - affirming and consistent with reality? We all know where babies come from, right? We can still respect Mary, even if her child is conceived in the normal way, just like everybody else. And why isn't there a holy baby girl as well as a holy baby boy? Why can't we have A Twin Sister for Jesus?

No, I'm not just saying that because I happen to be a girl twin with a twin brother. I'm saying it because being part of the story is important. Hearing your pronoun omitted year after year is indeed -- precisely as the cartoonist says -- a weird thing to tell a kid.

Meaning of Christmas

See also "Season's Cheatings"
by Duo Dickinson at Saved By Design

Last month, my brother Bruce posted an insightful explanation of not only the meaning of Christmas but also the meaning of the so - called War on Christmas.

I had to agree with our friend Mitzi who replied to Bruce, who usually has the last word on everything: "This was so good, you could have written it."

In this case, however, I also want to add my own "two cents worth":

I think the message of Christmas is "Be nice to pregnant women no matter who the father of the baby is and regardless of their legal marital status; and to babies no matter who their parents are. Remember: ". . . When you kiss your little baby, you've kissed the face of God . . . "

And this from The Reverend Nancy Rockwell in her article "No More Lying About Mary":

The Greek word Luke uses for virgin is an unusual one, a very specific word that means she has not yet born a child. Its precise meaning does not indicate sexual innocence. So let’s be clear: the focus is on her uterus. The state of her hymen is not at issue here. . . .

Mary is unmarried when the angel comes. The angel’s invitation and her independent decision tell us Mary does not need permission of clergy – or her parents – to become pregnant. God knows Mary owns her own body. And there is no shame in her decision. Mary is good news for unwed mothers everywhere.

Mary, wanted by God, according to the angel, for her bold, independent, adventuresome spirit, decides to bear a holy child – for a bold agenda: to bring the mighty down from their thrones; to scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts, to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich empty away. This is Mary: well-spoken, wise, gritty.

from the poem Christmas Carols
by Margaret Atwood

Children do not always mean
hope. To some they mean despair. . . .
Think twice then
before you worship turned furrows, or pay
lip service to some full belly
or other, or single out one girl to play
the magic mother, in blue
& white, up on that pedestal,
perfect & intact, distinct
from those who aren't. Which means
everyone else. It's a matter
of food & available blood. If mother-
hood is sacred, put
your money where your mouth is. Only
then can you expect the coming
down to the wrecked & shimmering earth
of that miracle you sing
about, the day
when every child is a holy birth.

Virgin Mary on Amazon
See also:
Why Christmas is Weird for Girls