August 27, 2010

Sit. Think. Discover.

Filed under: Ann the Columnist:Essays — Ann @ 11:00 am

I’m worried for us. This morning I was thinking about the many distractions which surround us on a moment-to-moment basis — no longer does television alone vie for our time and attention, we have available to us a variety of screens and gadgets. You know them; I need not name them.

And I began to wonder how many inventions and discoveries have been made across the ages by people who were…merely sitting. Thinking, pondering, reflecting. Have you heard of the German chemist Friedrich von Stradonitz? Apparently he was daydreaming about a snake forming a circle, and that led to “his solution of the closed chemical structure of cyclic compounds, such as benzene.” This story, by the way, hails from a Wikipedia entry on the concept of serendipity.

Another well-known story is that of Archimedes getting into his bathtub and noticing that the water level rose; by contemplating this he suddenly understood that “the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. This meant that the volume of irregular objects could be calculated with precision, a previously intractable problem” [Wikipedia]. I don’t know how many of these stories are apocryphal but the question is still valid: Are we not doing enough sitting, thinking, staring, daydreaming? What do we know today because someone was perched on a hillside, looking up at the stars, noticing?

I’m no technophobe; I’m not suggesting a bonfire of iPhones — I just think it would behoove us to set aside a bit more porch-sitting, navel-contemplating time. Otherwise, I worry that our attention spans will narrow so perilously that we will become a culture without great thinkers, inventors, composers. And perhaps I’m worried for nothing; it could be that because these communications devices are relatively new and novel, we are like a child on Christmas Day, wild-eyed and grabbing for our toys and unwilling to put them down even to eat Aunt Edna’s turkey frittata brunch. Perhaps eventually we’ll get bored, discard our devices, and wander outside again, looking up and around us. There’s so much yet to discover — if only about ourselves. The inspiring poet Mary Oliver understood the importance of connecting to soul through the universe, and I’ll close with her perfect commentary, entitled “Sleeping in the Forest.” It makes me think that, when we are ready to put down our gadgets and walk outside, we will be welcomed back. At least, that is my great hope.

“I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.”

August 22, 2010

Weather to Play

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Ann @ 7:53 am

I grew up on the shores of San Pablo Bay. That meant that, except for two predictable heat waves in late May and early September, every non-winter’s day was pretty much cool and windy. Winter brought mild rains. It was the perfect kid-climate. In my neighborhood, we ran around in shorts and sweaters, and our pink-cheeked healthfulness was not from a too-hot sun but, rather, from the brisk slaps of wind coming off the Bay. It was paradise, and it was the kind of climate that became, apparently, so entwined with memories of childhood that they all came tumbling back to me yesterday.

To my lucky-stars delight, we’ve had a relatively cool summer here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Coastal folks have bundled against the blustery chill, but we inland residents have reveled in postcard-perfect 75 degree days — as they say in Italian, non troppo freddo, non troppo caldo, e perfetto!; not too anything.

And some of those days have been even cooler — like yesterday. I was taking my afternoon walk and suddenly realized I was pretty much wearing the play-costume of my childhood — shorts and a hoodie. The sun was bright but the air was October-brisk and the wind was pinking my cheeks, tangling my air, and making me smile with the memories of a thousand childhood days climbing jungle gyms and calling “ollie ollie oxen free” (even when the Bay winds would sometimes blow those words impotently back into the caller’s face). As I walked, I realized, “This is my play weather.” I smiled to remember.

Global weirding — my phrase for changing weather patterns — has made that predictable climate a thing of the past, a thing of my childhood, along with dial phones, black-and-white television, and spoolies. But yesterday, for a brief moment, I remembered what it was like to be a Bay Area child, to run not just like the wind, but with the wind. It was glorious.

August 13, 2010

“Love your body!”

Filed under: The Healing Project — Ann @ 8:31 am

As a decades-long reader of women’s magazines, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen those three words on the covers of major publications, typically illustrated by a heroin-thin supermodel, and always promoting articles within which promise that if we lose enough weight or do enough crunches and lunges, we will, indeed, within “x” amount of time, love our bodies.

Last night I was thinking about me and my body, and what we’ve been through together. After losing 30 pounds in 2006, in the past year I’ve neglected my body so completely that I’ve gained back two-thirds of that weight and, worse, have drenched my cells with sugar and fat in order to do so. In other words, this wasn’t a whole-wheat pasta weight gain: this was body abuse. And, although I still walk 30-60 minutes daily, rain or shine, I’ve stopped my stretching routine — all of my muscles are short, tight, and cranky. Top that off with severe sleep deprivation and suffice to say that my poor body is worlds away from its best right now, and inching ever closer to being at its all-time worst.

As I reflected on this last night, I had a sudden surge of deep compassion for this 5’6″ frame which has carried me around for almost 58 years. I felt sad for my body and, unlike women’s magazine references, by “body” I don’t mean merely my hips and waist and chest, I also mean my lungs and heart and pancreas and small intestine and mitochondria — the whole package. My body and I — we’ve never had a good relationship.

Sometime around 5th grade I discovered food-as-comfort and plumped my way up into “husky” sized jeans. By 9th grade I was afflicting my body with nothing-but-eggs-and-grapefruit diets, and 11th grade brought my first significant weight loss. By sticking to 900 calories a day (and becoming so weak I couldn’t stand up in the afternoons), I started my senior year 40 pounds thinner and all the deprivation paid off, I thought, when Jimmy Dutra asked me if I’d been to Vic Tanny for my summer vacation. Of course, then Don Hodges castigated me for having gotten braces on my crooked teeth over the summer (“Why would you want to ruin your senior year with braces?!), so already the you-can-never-be-good-enough messages were piling on.

By that time, I was smoking a pack of Marlboros a day, a habit which continued for 20+ years.

The truth is, my entire life I felt like my body betrayed me: it was fat when the other girls were thin. In high school I developed hyperhydrosis (excess sweating — lovely), and nothing takes the fun out of being a teenage girl like having your mom sew dress shields in the underarms of your (baggy, to hide the burgeoning hips) clothes. I had naturally curly hair when Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy and other supermodels had silky straight hair; I had tiny eyes when the fashion was to look like a Keane character. I developed teenage acne so bad that I needed antibiotics; later in life I developed rosacea, a chronic skin disease causing facial redness, flushing, and tiny pimples. At its most advanced, it can cause your nose to become flaming-red and distorted, a la W.C. Fields and his rhinophyma. More loveliness.

Finally, in what I perceived to be its grandest deception ever, my body plunged me into full-scale menopause at the age of 37, and nothing makes you feel less sexy than telling your 27-year-old boyfriend you’re having a hot flash. To rub it in a bit — perhaps as payback for complaining about my curly hair all my life — my menopause came with hair loss, and what was once a rich, full head of curls felt comb-over thin on top, accompanied by frequent cascades of loose hairs all over my clothes.

And so all my life I paid my body back. I think my logic went, “You torture me, I’ll torture you,” and thus I fed it sugar and fat and salt and cigarette smoke and, in my 20s, alcohol; subjected it to on-again off-again diets and rapid weight loss and gain; deprived it of sleep; and invited it to sit under fluorescent lights in back-breaking chairs at a keyboard in stress-infused law offices for 30+ years. Yep, I sure showed IT. Talk about unclear on the concept.

Then came last night, and the rush of love I suddenly felt for this multicellular organism-individual I call self. I contemplated my legs which once powered me through a 43-mile backpacking trip; and my female parts, which once participated in the delivery of a perfect 7 pound, 12 ounce son; and my digestive organs which do their work even when I challenge them in new and terrifying ways; and my spine which helps me be straight and true and courageous when I choose; my heart and lungs, whose magical interplay I discovered in last semester’s Biology class; and my lovely soft-and-wrinkly-skinned neck which encourages me to “hold your head up!” (thank you, Argent); and my laugh-etched face; and my beautiful, beautiful brain which taught me to calculate Analysis of Variance and standard deviation and garnered me a B+ for the course….I could go on and on about the various roles each and every square inch of my body, inside and out, has played in getting me this far in life.

And all I ever thought about, mostly, was how to make it thinner (and, lately, my hair fatter). Well, enough. I declare a truce. From this point forward I am no longer at war with my body and, rather, am entering into a covenant with it. I will treat it well and hope it returns the favor. They say that’s how it works; I don’t know, I’ve been so focused on manipulating its outer covering for so long that I’ve lost any sense of true relationship with it.

But I know that I will never again experience the exhortation to “love your body!” as yet another invitation to reduce calories, increase crunches, and look into Botox. Instead, every time I see that, I think I’ll give myself a hug. Maybe that’s what it’s needed from me all along — at least, it’s a start.

August 12, 2010

Bobby and the Trumpet

Filed under: Feel-Good Story of the Day — Ann @ 5:05 pm

I was listening to Len Tillem’s “How come you’re callin’ a lawyer?” talk show on KGO radio while driving home from work today; at the top of the hour, Len put “Les” on the line to share the denouement of the call Les had made to the show yesterday.

Les — who sounded like a tired, kind, elderly Morgan Freeman — had previously called because the mother of his grandson, Bobby, had somehow become unable/unwilling to care for Bobby at some point, so this 14-year-old boy left home “with only the clothes on his back.” Now living with his grandpa, the musically-talented Bobby had apparently been begging his mother to let him at least come home to get his trumpet back, but had thus far been unsuccessful. I don’t know what the mother-son communication problem is, but it didn’t sound happy.

During the original call, Len Tillem had said that perhaps some of the listeners could help; he somehow made contact arrangements. So today when Les got on the line, he said he had talked to a “Mike in San Mateo” who told Les he had a trumpet he’d owned for years, hadn’t played in ages, and that he would gladly give his trumpet to young Bobby — all Les had to do was come down to San Mateo to get it. I’ll let Les tell the story as he told us over the air, quoting (roughly, from memory):

“Unfortunately, I had to tell him that without a car I couldn’t get down to San Mateo from Richmond…it would take hours and hours on different varieties of public transportation, and Len, this Mike said he would DRIVE up from San Mateo to Richmond and deliver it to us! He said he’d be there at 11 am the next day, and at exactly 11 o’clock he was on my doorstep with a beautiful trumpet. I asked him if he’d like to give it to Bobby himself, and he said he sure would. So we went to where Bobby was working — he does volunteer work — and Mike himself got to hand his trumpet to Bobby. Len, I took pictures and I’d love to send them to you.”

At that point Len Tillem got back on the air and said, “I’d love the pictures, Les, and let me tell you what ELSE happened after your call: we got tons of calls from listeners, wanting to do something. People were offering their trumpets — people were even offering money! I bet we got 15 calls from people all over the Bay Area, wanting to help.”

By this time, I had tears streaming down my face, thinking about Mike — who drove from San Mateo to Richmond! — and all the other good people who are our friends and families and neighbors and co-workers all over this beautiful and loving home we call the San Francisco Bay Area, all hearing about a little boy in need and dropping everything in their lives at that moment to contribute.

So if someone is having a bad day and says, “People are the worst!” or some such thing, please tell them the story of Bobby and the Trumpet.

August 5, 2010

No, Really: The BEST Cat

Filed under: About The Animals — Ann @ 4:12 pm

At 3 pm today, Neal got up from one of his marathon naps and asked, “Where’s the Boy?” (Boy, The Boy, Our Boy, G-Boy….all some of the nicknames for Geronimo, our almost three-year-old Bullseye Tabby). I said I hadn’t seen him since I left for work this morning at 7 am, and Neal’s face shadowed darkly with concern as he replied, “He’s been gone all day — since you left.”

While G-Boy’s being away from home for eight hours straight isn’t unprecedented, it’s highly unusual and I don’t remember the last time it happened. Typically, he strays off for a maximum of three consecutive hours — and lately, more like two. So now, both of us became rather worried. I said, “I’ll go call him.”

I don’t know that much about cats, but my entire cat-owning history has never included one who would come when his name was called. But in the past, Geronimo has done just that. Not always, not predictably, but just often enough so that if I’m really desperate, I’ll pull that particular ace out of its hole.

I went out into our backyard and hollered down our street, “Geronimo! Kitty kitty! C’mon boy!,” then went into the side yard and bellowed the same come-hither down our street. Then I started sweeping leaves (1) to keep busy, (2) to be outside if he came home, and (3) to make noise in case he could hear me. Then, with worried eyes, I watched his favorite entry points: through our backyard fence, or down the street from the east.

After two minutes of no-cat, I put the broom down and turned around and bellowed, “Ger-ON –” and suddenly a black-and-brown blur came tear-assing down the sidewalk, up the concrete fence, and down onto our patio with a big inquisitive, “Merr—owwwwwr!!”

I yelled to Neal, “Here he is!” and slumped on the concrete where he’d rested; there was much fussing and good-boying and purring and scritching and then Neal came outside and co-fussed. And then, because I didn’t want G-Boy to come home for nothing, I lavished salmon treats on our little guy and thanked him profusely for coming when called, cooing, “You’re the best boy in the whole world.”

Before Geronimo, I wasn’t much of a cat person. But as you may be able to tell, I’ve fallen head over (his) long silky tail in love with my 15 pounds of gorgeous boy. And you know what I love best? That he knows where home is, and that it’s here, with us.

Geronimo, At Home on Neal's Hand

Proposition 8 and the Bay State

Filed under: Ann the Columnist:Essays — Ann @ 12:45 pm

There’s much ado about something today as pro-gay marriage Californians celebrate the finding that anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Listening to KGO’s Ronn Owens show on the way home from work today, I found myself nodding in agreement to the reaction of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. He said three things which California’s future leadership — and electorate — must heed:

1) California should “get out of the marriage business.” I’ve heard this before and I’ve said it before, and it continues to be the most common sense way of handling the issue: States should issues licenses only for Civil Unions, and those ceremonies should be conducted by clerks and judges. This removes all religious and moral duty from the state’s shoulders and delivers it properly into the holy clasped hands of the various religious authorities. Two competent, consenting adults of any sexual orientation who desire to be married with all of the legal and property rights conveyed by statute can enter into a valid Civil Union; if the couple then desires to have a religious ceremony, they can seek that in their own mosques/synagogues/churches/you-name-it, and it would then be up to religious authorities to decide whether to sanctify unions between gay, interfaith or other religiously-problematic couples.

2) The only valid question I’ve heard as to yesterday’s ruling is this: How can one appointed official strike down and reverse the will of the electorate? This would not be a problem if California had the common sense that Massachusetts has: In the Bay State, a referendum cannot make it to the ballot until it first goes before a ruling body which declares (or denies) its constitutionality. Why is this not California’s approach?

3) Ronn Owens raised the question: Why are we incurring the expense of putting the “unconstitutional” ruling through a hugely expensive appeals process, when it will likely end up in the Supreme Court, anyway? Again, according to Dershowitz, Massachusetts law has an expedited process in place: In similar situations, the appeals process “middle-man” would be eliminated and the matter would leapfrog directly to the higher authority.

In summary:

1) Why are states involved in the messy morality business? Let’s be blunt: Is there any argument AGAINST gay marriage that doesn’t involve allegations of religious impropriety? Even the slippery-slope “if we allow this, then next we’ll have polygamy and marriage between men and goats” argument is all about moral judgment.

2) Why is California doing things backwards? First you decide if a Proposition is constitutional, then you put it on the ballot.

If the Bay State can get it right, surely the Golden State can, too. True, they haven’t yet adopted the Civil Union plan, but my money’s on them to be the first. And, to be fair, they’ve been a state 62 years longer than we have — they’ve had more time to develop and mature. But now that we’ve been shown at least two major ways in which we can save millions of dollars, let’s start doing things right. Who’s with me and Alan?

July 29, 2010

They Walk Among Us: Beware the Binaries

Filed under: Ann the Columnist:Essays — Ann @ 12:35 pm

I am insatiably curious about human nature and human nurture. My idea of a good time is noticing how people act and react, choose and decline, give and receive. It’s a good pastime for one who has chosen psychology as her field of study.

And it’s also convenient for one who’s employed by a psychologist. I can bring to him my questions about my planet-mates’ behaviors; he’s exceedingly educated and experienced and, in the year I’ve been there, I’ve learned quite a bit. Which brings me to my reason for writing.

Today he and I were discussing the possibility of ‘private parking’ signs for the office lot, and I told him my experience of living so close to the Sonoma Plaza that on holiday or event weekends, some people park in our private driveway, or block it. I launched my favorite question: “Why would someone do that?”

His explanation may seem obvious to some, but for me it opened up an entirely new way of understanding. He explained that there move among us “binary thinkers,” whose sole consideration when it comes to decision-making is “Does this serve my needs?” And if the answer is yes — no matter what the consequences or how it might hurt other people — the binary thinker will choose that self-serving action. Because I and most everyone know are sensitive to the cultural and legal restraints which order our behavior, I am now fascinated by the Binaries, and intend to watch for signs that I am in their presence.

As we finished our conversation, I asked the doctor, “Now, how common is this type of thinking? Because, maybe it’s just me, but it feels rather–” he interrupted me with a smile and asked, “Rampant?” I was quick to reply, “No. But common.” He said it’s primarily the reasoning of narcissists and other self-absorbed individuals. So I guess much depends on how common narcissism is in 2010 America — or at least in my little corner of it.

Thankfully, my day-to-day experience still confirms that most people are thoughtful, giving and kind. And I love to study them as well. When my husband, Neal, was going through the worst of his illness, one of my friends kept supplying us with rolls of quarters to do our laundry. If I hadn’t been so caught up in gratitude and could have put on my psych-student’s hat in that moment, I would have grilled her: What made you think of such a perfect way to help out someone in need? How did you get to be so heart-brilliant?

Answers to these and many other questions about who we are await me in the psychology courses I’ll be starting next month. And, who knows, with enough education and training, I may even come to fully understand the Binaries. And how to keep them from parking in my driveway.

July 28, 2010

The Peanut Gallery Moment

Filed under: My Funny Valentine — Ann @ 11:59 am

I was sitting on the couch, deeply involved in a television drama; Neal was reading in our bedroom. At the height of the characters’ emotionally fraught discussion, Neal strolled in, crossing in front of the TV to get to his bookshelf, quite absorbed in his task. One character emoted to another, “You can’t adopt a child the way you buy a head of cattle!,” and without looking up, Neal, focused on his shelves, responded nonchalantly, “You can on eBay.”

I fell off the couch, laughing.

July 27, 2010

Some Acting Skills Required

Filed under: My Funny Valentine — Ann @ 6:08 pm

How to make a little fun at home: Supposing your spouse or partner is in the living room, oh, say, at the computer, and you’re in the kitchen making final dinner preparations. When announcing to said SoP the time remaining until the meal is ready, walk in and say loudly, “Six of your Earth minutes left until –” and then stop abruptly and look stricken before recovering your smile and saying with a blank smile, “I mean, six minutes ’til dinner.”

He howled.

July 26, 2010

Words and Pictures

Filed under: Ann the Columnist:Essays — Ann @ 12:14 pm

Since I was a very young girl, my primary creative outlet has been with words. I had friends who could draw fabulous horses and cats; some who were talented in stitchery; still others who were the mini Paula Deens of the Easy-Bake Oven world. But I relied on my journals and poetry to express myself and into which I could pour my imagination and my artist’s soul.

That’s why it surprised me when, after my parents gave me my first-ever digital camera for my birthday last October, I found myself using it as a creative tool. I know how to reach out to people through my words; it had never occurred to me that I could speak to others through images.

I’m very much the beginner. I’ve not studied photography, nor am I familiar with the specifics of color, composition, et al. I may pursue those finer points as time and opportunity allow. But when I shared my spider-web photo on Facebook this morning, and a friend encouraged me to post it on my website, I realized that, perfect photos or not, I could use this blog to speak to readers not only through verbal observations, but through visual observations as well.

Therefore, I present here my very first photo gallery. I wouldn’t exactly call it Fine Art — but I can promise you it was Fun Art.

Spun Silk

Desert Shades

Psychedelic Bloom

Stark Beauty

Crossed by Light

Mirror Image

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