Whatever Gets You Through the Night

Another patient today, an older African-American woman named Ella walked in the room. She looked frail; thin hair and face. Told me, as if picking up a conversation we'd never had,

"They can't tell you when it's time. Only God knows that."

Taking the power she doesn't have away from the doctor and putting it on Jesus.

Receiving comfort in that. And, for her, and in that moment for me, too, I said I full-heartedly agreed.

Stillness of Esme

lying between us in bed, in as deep a darkness as this

communality with street lights allows.

This is the profile of a girl calmed after a bad dream

Long neck.

Golden (her word), hair swooped aristocratically over a high forehead.

Tiny nose, delicate and
maybe--eyes still open? 

Her breathing has slowed from its earlier panicked pace.

Is she thinking and not sleeping?

That's when I realize,
grateful it's her, not him:  

This is the difference between girls and boys.

(I generalize here for the sake of sleep).

Simon could never lie so still even at 4:45 in the morning.

Deeply sleepy comes out in him as

Hilarious, if only to him.

Sideways smile slips out a happy “No,” tone tilting upwards at the end of the word

to show he means it but it’s not personal. 

Instead of sleep he would offer us his great corporeality, roiling waves of legs

swinging down up CRASH on the bed

Heavy head seesawing its turn to do the same.

Ouch! Everyone says, eventually.

Even him, at the backdoor of tears, as it gets 

way too late to be up so long, Love.

But Esme.

Her inner life as strong as his legs.

Esme’s silence, her Esmeness

maddening during the day when questions go unacknowledged

a not quite guileless look up, surprised, What?

is the what which allows this quiet form, this elegance to lie between us in our bed.

Now in the deep dark early morning I remember:

She has her own world we don’t know about
the one we hoped she would create.

I fail first, fall asleep.

She touches me reassuringly on the leg

as I drift off.  

"Thumbnail" is the new "nutshell."

Health, Life, and Equality

Perhaps one day there will be a stem-cell treatment that can double one’s life expectancy by slowing the aging process, making a centenarian as spry as a quinquagenarian. But if such a serum benefits only the few who can afford it, our national life expectancy will hardly budge — it’s an average, after all. In 19th-century Sweden, the figure was dragged down by infant mortality. Today in the United States, it grows slowly because of the premature deaths of the less fortunate. Thanks to this vast inequality, even a high-tech fountain of youth would hardly move the needle.

“Look at the countries with the highest average life expectancy,” says Denney, referring to places like Japan, Australia, Canada and, yes, Sweden — nations that distribute their health resources more evenly. “Ultimately,” he says, “life expectancy is a measure of quality of life.”

By Maggie Koerth-Baker, science editor at BoingBoing.net and author of “Before the Lights Go Out,” on the future of energy production and consumption.

Published March 19, 2013 in the Magazine section of The New York Times.

The Seasons of the Bay Area As Noted By the Five Senses

Newcomers, naysayers: This is how we tell our quintuplets apart.  

Spring: Taste. Bitter flowers on children's tongues. Feta cheese (goat).

Summer: Touch. Cotton blend sweaters. Fog on faces, in lungs.

Bay Area Summer: Vision. Orange moon. Brown hills. Sutro Tower partially obscura.

Fall: Hearing. The leaves blow fiercer, and pause. The trees are in a hurry all of a sudden.

Winter: Smell. The bay, two miles inland. Rotting humos. 

One Second

Monday, September 23, 2013 7:34pm

I’m savoring the sweet summer air. Especially during either end, the tails of the day. Early early morning, and now, at twilight. In the middle of the night or la madrugada, sometimes I pause at a low open window, double over to put my face inches from the screen and inhale.  The moist coolness brings a relief that is not only physical, but as I dodge and worry about global warming, the relief is also mental, emotional. We still have coolness. I no longer take it for granted.

Musings

Cuddling with my six year old daughter last night, I’m both amazed and grateful that she still wants to. I imagine another mom, one who is happily ignorant of her own date of doom, wondering, “Will she still want to cuddle with me at 32?” I try and imagine it too, try and imagine me with her in bed as my grandma sometimes was. Me at 67. “Ha.” I gently re-align myself. 

In Memory of Anthony ‘Lil Tone’ Medearis Jr.

Eternal. Photo by John Vias (Berkeleyside, May 19, 2011)

The early morning's already burned
So I'll stay up late to write.

I wish I could make coffee
eat schniken
smell the morning air.

But I'll be like night, I'll respect my hosts.
Tonight the neighbors on Francisco Street are having a party.
At least it makes me feel better to think of them as neighbors but who knows
could be strangers.

Everyone's a little scared since that 3rd close murder right by Centro Vida.
Two days later I rode past the daycare. The children
still loudly playing in their yard. Shouldn't there be an announcement of some kind?
"A man died here, the flowers aren't yet wilted. Everyone get on bullet proof fences
the redwood won't protect the children
loudly playing here."

Could be about writing, but is about any work, paid or unpaid.

"In my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."- Junot Diaz

Quote stolen from the wonderful Writer's Salon of SF and Berkeley:

www.writingsalons.com

Congratulations Diana Nyad! 110 mile, 52 hour swim

Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau, via Associated Press

Yesterday, Diana Nyad became the first person to swim from Cuba to Key West without a shark cage. And only the second person, both women, do it every. The swim is 110 miles.

(Shark cages provide both protection from sharks and a drafting advantage. They block some water current so the swim is theoretically easier.)






Diana Nyad is an author, former queen bee squash player, and one bad ass open water swimmer. One of my favorite parts of her story is that this was her fifth attempt in 35 years to complete this swim.

Diana delivering her three messages. (Huffington Post) 

Jelly fish puffy, salt water and sun burnt, Diana emerged from the water after her nearly 53 hour swim to say:

"I have three messages. One is we should never, ever give up. Two is you never are too old to chase your dreams. Three is it looks like a solitary sport, but it takes a team."

I am amazed she could speak at all, let alone remember the moral of the story.

Oh, did I mention she is 64?

Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Congratulations Diana. 

Alejandro Ernesto / EPA

More reading, in case you are as fascinated as I am with this extreme athlete's mental and physical accomplishment:

http://www.diananyad.com

Article with an interactive map. Map has the record of Diana's route with details along the way:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/sports/nyad-completes-cuba-to-florida-swim.html?_r=0

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/02/diana-nyad-swim-cuba-florida1

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/diana-nyads-success-all-her-head-experts-say-8C11069093

About Attachment

 Look, look! I love this drinking glass! It holds the water admirably, it reflects the light beautifully!

  Yet for me, this glass is already shattered.

  Therefore I cherish every minute with it.

                            -Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, as told to Mark Epstein

~

He and I nose to nose, dragging out goodnight. I kiss his delicious doughy belly, soft as a baker’s bun, satisfyingly round.

He hugs me back tighter than you’d think possible

For a 3 year old.

We push our faces into each other’s necks and squeeeeeeeeze.

He won’t allow this much longer.

Who will he become?

I admire it, although I won’t see it.

We part slightly, I lean on one elbow to regard him.

He is strong. I see his tiny deltoids

small hills on milky arms.

Hands cupped behind his head, a kind confidence.

He is open, he is poised.

“You are beautiful, Mama!” he suddenly smiles.

For me this boy is already grown,

And I will shatter soon.

I cherish every minute.