Category Archives: Social Science

It’s A Year!

Greetings to the New Year! I hope you had a gentle and joyful holiday season. Mine was, though poignance and grief were blended in. I spent 18 days in Washington with my future in-laws, helping my father-in-law-to-be get to his radiation treatments for two weeks. I also assisted with holiday and guest preparations. Despite the stress inherent in the situation, it was a wonderful opportunity to get to know them better, to become their daughter in a way we had not yet experienced. They will continue to seek treatment for as long as there is something to pursue, knowing that in time, we must learn the difficult lesson of letting go. But not just yet.

The photo above is of Trixie, a cantankerous Devon Rex who is happiest when she is sitting on someone as long as they don’t move. The composition of curves and lines revealed in the soft light caught my eye. It makes a fetching picture. She was my buddy during my visit, and fortunately for me my own two cats aren’t jealous types. We were happily reunited on the 28th. I’ve spent the subsequent days settling in — cleaning, grocery shopping, unpacking.

So it is another year. Another January in which to attempt new behaviors with great intention before abandoning them. Another journey — marched or sauntered — through 365 days. Surprises await, some delightful, others disappointing. Ecstasy awaits, as does intense pain. As I watched the ball drop in Times Square, I thought of the millions of people who are in living hell in South Asia. My happiness was tempered by this awareness. The new year varies in meaning depending on one’s life at that time: for some, it symbolizes hope for new beginnings. For others, it is desperation (another year passed and I still didn’t do X?). For many it is a time of grief for recent losses, or for the memories of older loss stirred up. For just as many, it is simply a time when we struggle to write the correct year on various documents.

The world is immense, big enough to hold it all. One lesson I have learned over the years, that I keep affirming on any anniversary, is that opposites can co-exist. I can experience happiness, and this does not deny the reality of suffering. Likewise, I do not need to forsake happiness and only suffer. We have permission to be trivial and profound; we can wonder what to make for dinner while our hearts feel the weight of disaster. We are capable of doing this, if we will but allow ourselves to be with paradox.

As for myself, this is a good year to appreciate complexity, to relax my desire to control events, and to accept contradictions. It’s also an ideal time to make more art, savor more food, nurture more plants, read more books, and talk more often with “my peoples” — one moment, one day, one season at a time. To those of you who have written me in the past month with your heartfelt wishes, please know that I have held them close. I’m so grateful you are out there, faithfully checking in. It’s good to be back.

Simply For The Love Of It

The thinking iterated in this excerpt demonstrates the travesty of elevating “arts” as something that only “special, creative” people do.

Despite the maxim about old dogs and new tricks, I don’t think age alone creates such fears. Our society values professionalism and disdains amateurism. Why should I try Irish dancing when I can see “Riverdance”? Why should I attempt to play piano when I can pop Count Basie into the CD player? Why should I expose my clumsiness in sports when I can watch the Ice Capades on the telly? Such emphasis on professionalism makes us consumers rather than dancers, musicians, skaters — or painters. We stop doing things just for love and start spending money instead.

My clearest memory of being discouraged from artistic amateurism came when I entered high school. Like most children, I had always loved art: building pudgy clay pots, painting flowers for mommy, coloring everything colorable. But high school changed all that. My first day, the art teacher — a woman, I regret to say — informed us that the world is divided into artists and non-artists. Artists, as she told it, were different than ordinary folk. They saw things more clearly, felt things more deeply, suffered torments as the crass world grated against their sensitive souls. Such people, she said, were rare and precious. They were geniuses. She had never seen more than one per class. One genius, all the rest clods. Our work would reveal the truth. She would be the judge.

Then she gave us our first assignment.

You can imagine the anxiety as we drew silently, each hoping not to be revealed as an insensitive clod. Appallingly, I can still remember my piece, a little landscape. It seemed very sensitive indeed to me, seemed to reveal my inner torment and depth of soul. I shook as I handed it in.

I shook even harder when the teacher picked up my little drawing. My heart stopped in anticipation. I felt like I was choking. Was it true? Could it be I was an artist? A genius?

But no. The teacher picked my drawing to show how plodding some work could be, how derivative, how lacking in insight. Another student — I do not remember who, I was in a blur of pain — was pronounced the class genius.

I vowed, at that moment, never to paint again.

–Patricia Monaghan, Just For the Love of It, Matrifocus

I had a similar experience in my night grade English class. I wrote a short story that earned a lower grade that I’d expected, and I was crushed. I never wrote fiction again until my late twenties, when due to the paucity of available classes I had to sign up for a fiction writing class for my degree. I managed to do well in that class, but I found writing a torture. I believe that my resistance to writing fiction is rooted in that original experience. Fortunately for Monaghan, she decided to plunge through her fear and made a happy discovery, which you can enjoy by clicking on the Matrifocus link above.

Create A New Mood

From The New York Times: Waiting for a President:

If he is going to succeed at achieving anything of substance, the next president will have to help the nation reach some new place where elected officials expect that rewards can be won from cooperation and mutual respect. Right now, we are in the peculiar position of suffering political paralysis, despite the fact that there is a clear consensus on most questions of policy.

Any pollster, and any reasonable politician, can tell you what most Americans want, particularly when it comes to a domestic agenda. Pick the moderate position on almost any issue — Social Security, gay rights, taxes — and you will find the public right behind you. But lawmakers can’t lead themselves into a bipartisan consensus. Only a president can create a new mood, and he can do it only by sacrificing his own short-term political advantage on occasion for the common good.

Then this, via Fatshadow:

The good news: America is a divided nation. Despite the pundit hand-wringing over this fact, it is a positive thing. Nearly — nearly — half of the electorate rejected Bush’s leadership, his agenda, his priorities, his falsehoods. From Eminem to the chairman of Bank of America to 48 Nobel laureates to gangbangers who joined anti-Bush get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states. Nearly half of the voting public concluded that Bush had caused the deaths of over 1100 American GIs and literally countless Iraqis (maybe 100,000) for no compelling reason. Nearly half saw the emperor buck naked and butt ugly. Nearly half said no to his rash actions and dishonest justifications. Nearly half realized that Bush had misrepresented the war in Iraq as a crucial part of the effort against al Qaeda and Islamic jihadism. Nearly half desired better and more honest leadership. Nearly half knew that Bush has led the country astray.

—David Corn