A Thought for the Day............

 "With every passing hour our solar system comes 43 thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in the Constellation of Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress."

---Ransom K. Ferm

"The Sissie Strikes Back" - Ursula Leguin, and Old Age

Rooted Saga (2023) 

"I've lost faith in the saying "You're only as old as you think you are"

 - ever since I got old."

"It is a saying with a fine heritage.  It goes right back to the idea of the Power of Positive Thinking, which is so strong in America because it fits in with the Power of Commercial Advertising and with the Power of Wishful Thinking, aka the American Dream.  It is the bright side of Puritanism:  what you deserve is what you get (never mind just now about the dark side).  Good things come to good people and youth will last forever for the young at heart.  Yup."

                                                        -----Ursula Leguin 

 Scrolling  through Face book I am increasingly annoyed by various ads, memes, and "positive thinking" posts that assure me if I just purchase this product, follow that meditation or breathing exercise, or re-arrange my thinking process,  I will defeat old age, look like Jane Fonda, or renew my sexual life after some ( quite happy and relieved that I'm not in the market for it) 20 years without one.  Please.  

If I've gained anything from Old Age besides arthritis (and at 76 I believe I qualify) it is an occasional modicum of wisdom,  and an equally occasional modicum of being able to see through the surfaces of things.  Sometimes I even glimpse the roots.  I like that.

This morning I opened a book appropriately titled No Time to Spare, by Ursula K. Le Guin.  As I opened this little collection of essays, published not long before her death in 2018,  I encountered "The Sissie Strikes Back", a short reflection on old age in America.  And once again my lifelong Shero has provided me with a  Satori Jolt (witness the quote above).  And a good response to all those annoying memes that used to make me feel so unevolved.   

Official Trailer | The Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin | American Masters | PBS

 https://youtu.be/gynLfdNVVHs?si=cirfEoK0P3dNpoFp

Thanksgiving 2025

 

"You think this is just another day in your life, but its not just another day.  It's the one day in your life that is given to you.  Its given to you, it's a gift,  the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.......

Look at the faces of the people you meet.  Each face has a unique story, a story that you could never fully fathom.  And not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors is there.  And in this present moment, in this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here......"

Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast

Following the celebrations and remembrances of Samhain/Dia de los Muertos,  which coincided traditionally with the Last Harvest Festival of the year  (hence all the pumpkins!) we enter the advent of Winter, November.   As the Wheel  turns, the final Bounty is stored away  before the first snows fall.  Apples are in barrels, ready  to be pressed into cider.   

What now, with leaves fallen amid the darkening, overcast days?  Well, in the U.S. we celebrate Thanksgiving (traditionally done with family, and large birds called turkeys).  There are stories about how the generous native people of New England brought the first turkeys to Puritan immigrants (otherwise called colonists), and so that's the traditional myth being celebrated.  Although, from the viewpoint of Native people themselves, history has demonstrated that this was not something to celebrate at all - realistically, it might better be a day of mourning for them.  

But leaving that story behind, and returning to the Wheel of the Year, this seems to me a perfect time to celebrate Gratitude.  How can we talk about the closing of the year,  going "into the dark"  ~ without, finally, arriving at GRATITUDE?  How can we really look at the experience of being alive without finally arriving at Gratitude?

I've shared this video by Louie Schwartzberg before.  I wanted to share it again. 

Learn more about Louie Schwartzberg  and Moving Art at  www.movingart.com.

http://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ

Poems for the Day of the Dead

Florence on horse, Griffith Park, 1928

 Girl and Horse, 1928

by Margaret Atwood

You are younger than I am,

you are someone I never knew
you stand under a tree
your face half-shadowed,
Holding the horse by its bridle.

Why do you smile? Can’t you
See the apple blossoms falling around
You, snow, sun, snow,
listen, the tree dries
and is being burnt, the wind

Is bending your body,
your face ripples like water
Where did you go?

But no, you stand there
exactly the same,
you can’t hear me,

forty years ago you were caught by light
And fixed in that secret place
where we live, where we believe
nothing can change, grow older.

(On the other side
of the picture, the instant
is over, the shadow
of the tree has moved. )

You wave,
then turn and ride
out of sight through the vanished
orchard, still smiling

(as though you do not notice)

GHOSTS

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not cosmetically renewed

and boxed, their faces familiar and serene.

Or brought to an essence, pale ashes in elegant canisters.

I ask for the other dead:

those ghosts that wander

unshriven among our sleep,

haunting the borderlands of our lives.

The dead dreams,

The failed loves.

The quests, undertaken with full courage

and paid for in blood

that never found a dragon, a Grail, a noble ordeal

and the Hero's sacred journey home.

Instead, the wrong fork was somehow taken, or the road

wandered aimlessly, finally narrowing

to a tangled gully

and the Hero was lost, in the gray and prosaic rain,

hungry, weary, to finally stop somewhere, anywhere

glad of bread, a fire, a little companionship.

Where is their graveyard?

Were they mourned?

Did we hold a wake,

bear flowers, eulogize their bright efforts

their brave hopes

and commemorate their loss with honor?

A poem?

An imperishable stone to mark their passing?

Did we give them back to the Earth

to nourish saplings yet to flower,

the unborn ones?

Or were they left to wander

in some unseen Bardo, unreleased, ungrieved.

Did we turn our backs on them unknowing,

            their voices calling, whispering impotently

            behind us

            shadowing our steps?

                  Lauren Raine   1997

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, 

and keeps on walking

because of a church 

that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him
as if he were dead.

And another man,

 who remains inside his own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go

far out into the world

toward that same church,
which he forgot.

Rainier Maria Rilke (Translated by Robert Bly)

         On Meeting Shari After 22 Years

I see your  father's  gesture
(how is it possible, to remember him, after all these years?)
yet there it is renewed, a play of shadow and light
 flickering across your face.

You were a Milagro
that inhabited me

for a little while 
and then grew on without me.

What shall I call this door,
opening today between our lives?

Multitudes have passed this way. 

For that moment
I see them in your eyes,
then I pay the bill, finish coffee,
and descend into the subway, waving goodbye.

How can I tell you
that I am casting my love
like a daisy with petals partly plucked,
a firefall of dandelion seed
into the wind
into the world

as you must do as well

Lauren Raine (1990)

Flora with Florence (1917)

old photos,

escaping a tin box:

They are stories with wings

 butterflies, or white moths

fluttering at the glass,

ephemeral, half-glimpsed stories

lighter than air, 

these unknown memories

quietly escaping,
through 

an open window

Florence at 92

Hecate

  

Spider Woman Speaks..............

 “What might we see, how might we act, if  we saw with a webbed vision? The world seen through a web of relationships…as delicate as spider’s silk,  yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.” 

Catherine Keller, Theologian,  FROM A BROKEN WEB:  Separation, Sexism, and Self 

 "What is the new mythology to be,  the mythology of this unified Earth as of one harmonious being?"

 Joseph Campbell

 

Persona, "Ritual of Endarkenment", and the Carport Theatre

  

I'm pleased to be participating this fall in Tucson's Carport Theatre's Community Theatre presentation with  Excerpts from my "Ritual of Endarkenment".   

 Ritual of Endarkenment on SoundCloud

Persona: Masks that Hide and Masks that Reveal

October 25, 2025, 8 to 9:15 pm

Doors open at 7:30 pm

artwork by Lauren Raine

Theater, poetry, dance, music and art by local creatives:

Justin Begay, Scott Bird, Jolynn Farr, Heide Foley, Phil Franchine, Joke Harmonica, 

Laura Milkins, Jody R. Netzer,  Lauren Raine, Marcus Wilson, Jungin Yee

 

SOLD OUT