Reflections on Loss of Community

"The paradox of our time in history is that we spend more,but have less, buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We write more, but learn less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait"

George Carlin

I find I am reluctant to sell my motor home, because it represented a dream I had of finding a more friendly life in a small town in New Mexico. I don't know if it would have worked out that way, but I think it might.  But the truth is I can't leave Tucson now not only because of responsibilities to my mother, but economic realities as well.  And yet, I've never really felt "at home" here, never really been able to find any kind of lasting community. 

I once had an astrologer do an Astro-Cartography chart for me.  Turned out the worst places I could be in the world were Phoenix and Indianapolis, with Saudi Arabia being a bad choice too.  Well, I'm only 100 miles from Phoenix ..........but if I went to New Mexico, or back to Northern California, would things really be different?  I'd  over 60 now, and the world is a different place.   I think it's very difficult for many people to find community now, and loneliness, in spite of our "instant connections" is increasingly pernicious in American society.  And its something no one talks about, because it's both subtle and embarrousing.  If you feel isolated it must be your fault, right?  

I come from a generation and time that lived in communal houses, and was big on co-ops.  And yet, all these years later, I find myself living in a house in a neighborhood where I know no one.  When my mother lived here she never knew her neighbors, and they don't want to know me either.  

I don't know when it happened, but I don't send out emails about my new work, blog posts, or even interesting tidbits of information any more because......well, we all know that it would fall among hundreds of emails.  The assumption, somewhere along the line, I came to make  is that no one has time to read my emails any more, and if they do, they don't have time to respond.    And yet........I remember when I used to write long letters to people, when people did that.  

I feel the same way about calling people  unless I have a specific reason to exchange information. In the "Information Age" that's a real BUZZWORD.   The serpentine undulations and spiral logic of the art of conversation are lost in such a world that values "information" and "getting things accomplished" above all else.

I go to the coffee shop now and confront rows of impregnable laptops, and it seems to me that the days of just hanging out are over.    I join groups and listen to speakers, but that never seems to become one-on-one either.  You listen, everyone gets their 1.5 minute of question and answer, and then you go home.   If I find it frustrating, it's because I'm an anachonism already. 

The function of this blog has been to explore connection, the often invisible strands of Spider Woman's Web.  But I like to have my occasional rant about dis-connection as well.

"Americans' circle of close confidants has shrunk dramatically in the past two decades and the number of people who say they have no one with whom to discuss important matters has more than doubled, according to a new study by sociologists at the University of Arizona. "The evidence shows that Americans have fewer confidants" said Lynn Smith-Lovin, one of the study's authors. "This change indicates something that's not good for our society. Ties with a close network of people create a safety net. These ties also lead to civic engagement and local political action."

The study compared data from 1985 and 2004 and found that the number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Researchers also found that the number of people who said they had no one with whom to discuss such matters more than doubled, to nearly 25 percent. The survey found that both family and non-family connections dropped, with the greatest loss in non-family connections."

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Loneliness-Is-Getting-Rampant-in-America-27518.shtml 

Recently I  re-connected with two friends from college.  One I haven't seen in 25 years, the other in 10.   She said she was coming to Tucson for a concert and the Dia de Los Muertos parade.  I made up the guest room and  looked forward, I suppose, to a long discussion about where we've been since graduate school.  Instead we rushed to the parade, spent a lot of time trying to park, had time for a brief drink, then they both rushed to their concert, and I got an email a few days later saying how great it was to re-connect.

Well, I guess so.  That seems to be how it's done these days............?  Kind of like Facebook.  Abreviated, condensed.   Why should I be disappointed?

The busy, busy, busy  indifference of our world is sometimes amazing to me.   I pulled up a few past entries I wrote on the subject. I think creating community is a very important endeavor today, but it's not really easy at all, because the drift of our culture is going in the opposite direction.

May, 2010:

 Yesterday I saw something that happens everyday, but it stayed with me.

 I was looking for a post office, which I found.  There was a long line, and a nice looking gentleman, with a badge that said "Allesandro" was the "maitre'd" of the operation.  In the section between the postal tellers and the long  line was an older woman in a wheelchair.......I could see that she often came to the post office because she knew everyone's names, and in that unfortunate and busy place, she was trying to engage the tellers and Allesandro with conversation by asking a lot of questions about mailing options, asking where the bathroom was, and making some personal comments in the hope of response.  The people in line were annoyed because she was taking up time, and space, and the tellers smirked.  Finally she apologized, and told everyone she was "under the influence of legal drugs", meaning I assume painkillers, and away she rolled, looking embarrassed, down the street.

I didn't think she seemed like a crazy person............on the contrary, she had an intelligent face and a pleasant voice.  She was just desperately lonely, and here was a place with people who were "familiar", and where the hum of  activity was going on.  She was like a stray dog, hoping for a scrap of affection or attention in a place where she surely wasn't going to get it.

Did I do anything?  No, but I sympathized.   I have a better social mask than her, and I have legs and a car, so I'm better off.  People like the Post Office lady have fallen through the cracks.  Am I the only one who saw her, was she invisible to everyone else?

 I should have asked her  to have coffee with me.  Maybe I would have found her disturbing, or it would have taken "time from my busy life".  But I might have learned something, been touched in some way.  I suspect, if I had, she would have looked at me with something akin to terror or suspicion, and refused. Maybe I should have tried anyway.

Here's another entry I found that kind of addresses the issue as well.  I still miss the "Tempe Beach". 

 August, 2008:

Tempe is the home of ASU, a mega-university, and is part of the vast sprawling urban complex that Phoenix has become. But my memories there go back to when I was a child, and one of my fondest memories was  the "Beach".

Back then, Tempe was just a little college town, and in the '50's, only rich people (very few of whom lived in Tempe) could afford a private swimming pool. The Tempe Beach was a huge public swimming pool that took up a whole block, and in the summer, when it was too hot to swim in the day, as soon as the sun went down families arrived with towels in hand, to swim, and eat hot dogs and ice cream from stands at the "Beach". It was a riotous scene of kids in plastic swimming caps and boxer shorts leaping in and out of the pool, a legion of life guards, flirtatious college students posing for each other, and young families socializing at picnic tables.

The "Beach" is long gone, and private swimming pools are  common now, and people can swim with all the "privacy" they could want in their own back yard, along with spending a lot of time and money maintaining that privacy (not to mention the enormously wasteful water use all this "privacy" requires). But I think, even with the obsession Americans seem to have with insulating themselves thoroughly from contact with "strangers" - that there are a few people like myself, who remember the color, fun, and crowds of the "Beach".

The demise of the "Tempe Beach" reminds me of the demise of the "diners" my mother still remembers fondly. Breakfast, for her as a young working woman, involved a whole community of people cooperating to share an experience called "breakfast". Her eggs came with a waitress, cooks, dishwashers, and the regulars she got to know by virtue of eating there regularly.  A  disposable egg mac muffin and a throwaway coffee alone in the car on the way to work may be more convenient.......but is it better? 

***
Well, I do have to add that somethings are, indeed, better.  The Tempe Beach was, in its early days, segregated.  That's a huge change for the better.  

Just some pictures......

Earth Shrine Icon #12 (2012)

"The future enters into us, 
in order to transform itself in us,
long before it happens."

Rilke

Just felt like posting two images, one a recent sculpture (thank you, Charlie, for letting me turn your hands into a tree), the other a photo my roomate, Amaranta, took of sparks over a bonfire she attended at Halloween.  She seems to be, like my friend Ginny, another person who has orbs show up in her photos (they never do in mine).  This image is beautiful in its own right..........almost, a kind of dance.

Photo by Amaranta Kozach

"Don't just do something.  Stand There."

The Book of Grace

More "Numina" Masks..........

 SPIDER WOMAN

I’ve had a lot of names.  It doesn’t matter what you call me.
Call me Tse-Che-Nako,  "the One who makes the world"
with the stories I spin.  Call me  Spider Woman, the Weaver.

Listen, I’ll tell you something.
 Because you came  to the red desert
empty, listening to the wind.

When the Third World ended, I wove  a long thread
And led the people through the Kiva to a new world.
A new world is being born again.

 It’s time to weave a new story.

Walk out into the desert and sit beneath a cholla.
Listen to the ones that live here.
Stories like threads woven into the land.
Stories that wrap themselves around old bones and pottery shards,
that fly, or run on four legs.
Stories written in the rock.
And cracks in the land like a spider web,

full of light.
Once, you could see the Web
as plain as day.  Each shining thread 
touching each thread.

You say you can't see it.
Well, take a look around!
You don't need to climb a mountain to get the big picture.

All of its snaking rivers and twining roots
Are inside of you.  All those threads
come right out of your hands
and  your hearts
and go on forever

into the Earth,
and into each other,
and into all your stories,
into everyone you'll ever know,
into all those who came before you,
and all those who will come after you.

(1998)

Desert Spring:  "Our Lady of the Arroyo"

I keep making "Numina" masks, because they keep suggesting themselves to my heart.   I don't know what to do with them.........they have no "voices" yet, or people who want to use them. I'm left with hoping that they will suggest their own use .........that they'll have an impulse within them to lead me somewhere else. Now doesn't that sound strange.......but I think that's a bit how Spider Woman works.

In a recent post, while asking this question about this weird collection of masks I seem to be making, I found a comment about a story written by Rob MacGregor (I often visit their fascinating blog on Synchronicity):

"Lenore is an artist.  She sees faces and people in trees, rocks, water, etc.  She draws what she sees, then painstakingly removes whatever traps the faces / people and frees them to move on to whatever is next."

I think that's a pretty elequent way of talking about art, and a good bit of advice for me!

Giving Birth to Spring

Patricia Monaghan

 

when I choose, I’m blood-young again,
I rise fresh as washed granite
from foam, I love whom and when

I choose. Here I stand, pomegranate

in hand, ripe as a bud but old, old
as rock, unshakeable now, a power
essentially female and free

....." Hera Renews Her Youth", Patricia Monaghan

I am very saddened to learn today  of the passing of Patricia Monaghan I saw her just this spring at the Women and Mythology Conference in San Francisco, which she was instrumental in creating and coordinating. I also remember her from years at the Starwood Festival, and the community I love so at Brushwood Folklore Center.  Patricia has contributed so much to the Goddess community, the Pagan Community, to consciousness,  and to waking up the world. She will be very much missed.

Thank you Patricia.  You've given all of us so much.   I wish we had more time with you. 

THINGS TO BELIEVE IN

trees, in general; oaks, especially;
burr oaks that survive fire, in particular;
and the generosity of apples
seeds, all of them: carrots like dust,
winged maple, doubled beet, peach kernel;

the inevitability of change
frogsong in spring; cattle
lowing on the farm across the hill;
the melodies of sad old songs
comfort of savory soup;
sweet iced fruit; the aroma of yeast;
a friend’s voice; hard work
seasons; bedrock; lilacs;
moonshadows under the ash grove;

something breaking through

—Patricia Monaghan

 From "Voices of the American Land":

Patricia Monaghan  is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Homefront, on the impact of war on families, and many works of nonfiction including The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit. Among her literary awards have been a Pushcart Prize and the Phoenix Award for environmental poetry.

In Grace of Ancient Land award winning poet, playwright and essayist Patricia Monaghan writes of and from the Driftless area of Southeastern Wisconsin. The poems reveal the unique typography of stream-cut valleys and limestone-crowned hills that rolls out in a 600 mile swath of forest, farm and field. Patricia Monaghan opens to us the heart of this virtually unknown magical geography. Across wilding orchards, to a blaze of "prairie grasses/pink and scarlet in the dying sun" the poet’s attention is precise, awed, unsentimental. 

Within these arcs Patricia watches light fall across the meadow pearling the hissing woodlands:  

 "the dust-blue grapes ripe among the sunset plums

   was grace itself . . . 

   the embrace of  the unsought present"

• 
  Magical gardens
• 
  Goddess Path
• 
  The Red‑Hair...
• 
  Seasons of the witch
• 
  The goddess...
• 
  The Encyclop...
• 

Storms

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

David Whyte 

4 years ago I went to Puerto Rico, where I encountered a tropical storm. My life in Tucson, post monsoon season, is placid, safe, dull, perhaps that's why I dreamed last night of Puerto Rico, of storms I have had the privilege to meet (and survive). Intensities…….that’s what the tropics are, life at its most vibrant, virulent, creative, predatory, colorful………impossible to be in the midst of that potency of life and not become intoxicated with it. Intoxicated or terrified, take your choice. Perhaps, in retrospect at least, experiences can be, well, kind of like meals. How did they TASTE? Did they fill, were they nourishing, spicy, sweet or bitter,  or toxic, making one slow, dull, digestive.

"The world is not with us enough - oh taste and see!" the poet said (Denise Levertov this time)  and it's true.

I remember I had a room with a balcony at the top of a hotel  in Rincon. I arrived  off season to visit someone, and had to find a place to stay unexpectedly.  I  felt a bit like a character from Stephen King’s “The Shining”, with a whole hotel to myself at night, empty bars ringing with the ghosts of bands and booze and laughter and sex, below me, two levels, empty blue pool, palm frond chairs, wind, wind, wind, the wet, heavy tropical air, wind blowing over wicker tables. As the storm advanced across the dark ocean, the lights went out, and there were no candles, or even an attendant to ask about candles.

So, I sat in the state of Storm, with nothing to do but witness.

I do not think I shall ever forget standing on the balcony, the intense heavy silence, sounds of the koki frogs, a woman calling for her dog in Spanish “Limon, Limon!”, and watching the sudden illumination of lightning as it revealed an advancing mass of  clouds, rolling in from the distant ocean. I could not but be awed by the truth of that moment, our lives, our plans, our hopes and imaginations of what is existing in the brief moments between those storms.

 

I know that sometimes
your body is hard like a stone
on a path that storms break over,
embedded deeply
into that something that you think is you,
and you will not move
while the voice all around
tears the air
and fills the sky with jagged light.

But sometimes unawares
those sounds seem to descend
as if kneeling down into you
and you listen strangely caught
as the terrible voice moving closer
halts,
and in the silence
now arriving
whispers

Get up, I depend
on you utterly.
Everything you need
you had
the moment before
you were born.

~ David Whyte ~

(Where Many Rivers Meet)

History of the Department of Peace in the U.S.

I posted this article a year ago, and think it's worth posting again as the second term of Obama begins.  It looks to me like this is an idea whose time has come  (and gone - and come - and gone - and come.....)    In asking why we don't have a "Department of Peace", I was  amazed to learn the long and dedicated history of people and times who have, in fact, tried to create just that.  It was first proposed in 1793, along with the founding of the Constitution. 

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The history of legislation to create a Department of Peace

The peace movement in the United States has a proposed legislative history that dates to the first years of the republic:

1793: Dr. Benjamin Rush, Founding Father (signer of the Declaration of Independence), wrote an essay titled "A plan of a Peace-Office for the United States". Dr. Rush called for equal footing with the Department of War and pointed out the effect of doing so for the welfare of the United States in promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country. First published in a 1793 almanac that Benjamin Banneker authored, the plan stated (among other proposals):

--Let a Secretary of Peace be appointed to preside in this office; . . . let him be a genuine republican and a sincere Christian. . . .Let the youth of our country be instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in the doctrines of a religion of some kind; the Christian religion should be preferred to all others; for it belongs to this religion exclusively to teach us not only to cultivate peace with all men, but to forgive—nay more, to love our very enemies.
--To subdue that passion for war . . . militia laws should everywhere be repealed, and military dresses and military titles should be laid aside. . . .

1925: Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the League of Women Voters, at the Cause and Cure for War Conference, publicly suggested a cabinet-level Department of Peace and secretary of peace be established.

1926/1927: Kirby Page, author of A National Peace Department, wrote, published and distributed the first proposal for a cabinet-level Department of Peace and secretary of peace.

1935: Senator Matthew M. Neely (D-West Virginia) wrote and introduced the first bill calling for the creation of a United States Department of Peace. Reintroduced in 1937 and 1939.

1943: Senator Alexander Wiley (R-Wisconsin) spoke on the Senate floor calling for the United States of America to become the first government in the world to have a Secretary of Peace.

1945: Representative Louis Ludlow (D-Indiana) re-introduced a bill to create a United States Department of Peace.

1946: Senator Jennings Randolph (D-West Virginia) re-introduced a bill to create a United States Department of Peace.

1947: Representative Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois) introduced a bill for “A Peace Division in the State Department”.

1955 to 1968: Eighty-five Senate and House of Representative bills were introduced calling for a United States Department of Peace.

1969: Senator Vance Hartke (D-Indiana) and Representative Seymour Halpern (R-New York) re-introduced bills to create a U.S. Department of Peace in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The 14 Senate cosponsors of S. 953, "The Peace Act", included Birch Bayh (D-IN), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Alan Cranston (D-CA), Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Edmund Muskie (D-ME). The 67 House cosponsors included Ed Koch of New York, Donald Fraser of Minnesota, and Abner Mikva of Illinois, as well as Republican Pete McCloskey of California.

1979: Senator Spark Matsunaga (D-Hawaii) re-introduced a bill to create a U.S. Department of Peace.

2001: Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) re-introduced a bill to create a U.S. Department of Peace. This bill has since been introduced in each session of Congress from 2001 to 2009. It was re-introduced as H.R. 808 on February 3, 2009 and is currently supported by 72 cosponsors. In July 2008, the first Republican cosponsor, Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD) signed on.

2005: Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota) introduced legislation in the Senate to create a cabinet-level department of peace a week after Dennis Kucinich introduced a similar bill in the House.

And we still don't have a Department of Peace. 

 

The Secret Life of Things

Long may you run
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining
in the sun

 Long may you run

.....Neil Young

First, of course, hooray!  We don't have Romney for president, and there is still hope that America may become a more humane, sane country.  If he had won, I'd be writing about my immanent move to New Zealand or Panama..............

So, a domestic matter that I felt deserved a bit of Dia de los Muertos honor as well.  It's time for me to let go of my "$3,500.00 Home", Lucy.  I can't afford to maintain her as a "second home", so it's time for her to hopefully find a new owner who will enjoy her as I have.  Housing may be going up, but Lucy cost me $3,500.00, was and is low-energy (at least, when standing), recycled,  remodeled (by me), had no mortgage, no property taxes, and if I didn't like the neighborhood, I moved her.  I realize motor home housing is not that good for people living in cold climates, but for people in the Southwest, and particularly seniors on a low budget, it's a solution to low cost housing.

I've had some happy times in Lucy, and although she isn't much up to long road trips anymore, she can still be settled somewhere and be a nice home for someone.  And what I think about as I sadly prepare to place ads is how I hope I can find someone who will appreciate my old home, take care of her.  Be friends.

We are such a disposible society, hardly  anyone understands my thinking in this way.  And yet, "things" have a kind of life as well, and deserve honor and gratitude for the service they've given.   Whether a house, or a car, or a teapot, things are infused with the energy of those who have owned and used them.  A fortunately enjoyed item can emanate peace, or comfort, or pleasure.........you want to touch it, sit in it, sleep in it, eat off of it, look at it.  It just feels good and you don't know why, and that "mana" one feels goes beyond design.
The disposibility of our culture has not only caused environmental destruction, but it's also caused us to lose this sensibility, a kind of "6th sense" that tuned us to the "secret life of things".

For example, people used to inherit collections of precious china, cups and saucers that were proudly brought out to serve tea to guests.  Those teacups (and I have a few of my own) are infused with the ancient aroma of ancestral tea leaves, and the hands and lips of people long gone.  Imagine people sitting to tea, eating their cakes and enjoying the lovely patterns of flowers on the cup in their hand, colors emerging from the amber liquid of the tea?  As a child I used to play with those fragile little cups and imagine their use and history.  How can a disposible Starbucks cup of coffee even begin to compare? Or how about my 75 year old sewing machine, which still works?  Think of the women who cherished this precious machine, kept it oiled and replaced the belts over the years, the changing fashions that were constructed for parties and work under that needle?  

So, my old mobile home, my friend.  Thank you for years of shelter and good dreams, for meals cooked and roads wandered.  Long may you run.