A G.O.M.E.R. Story, or Death by Carrot

The best laid plans gang aft awry, or whatever the exact quote is. I had a plan for this autumn, as I’ve had borderline too many commitments to handle. I had a plot this year in our town's community garden. I was lucky to get a space in this gold-plated community effort, for once my town decides to do something,  it is all-the-way luxury class. We have an electronic gate, a sturdy fence, and the township supplies aged compost and sturdy raised boxes. We’ve had a rather chilly autumn this year and so it’s been a question for this old person of waiting for the stillest and warmest day possible to finish up. I’d watched Weather World from Penn State faithfully; I’d seen an upcoming Monday and Tuesday were going to be the last hurrah of Indian Summer. Perfect, I thought, as this was the drop dead-week for clearing up at that garden!

In the meantime, I was consuming those vegetables, both my own and those of generous neighbors. On the fatal day, I’d had a delicious lunch of peppers stuffed with beans, sprouts, bright orange winter squash and finished  with a fresh apple—a crisp, yet sugary Empire, I believe.  The coup de grace to this high fiber orgy was an entire, crunchy, raw-from-the-garden carrot.

Oh, and BTW the backstory is that there are significant portions of gut missing after a long illness followed by two surgeries.  By 5 p.m. that evening, I knew I was in trouble; by midnight, the waves of pain were mountainous. It was time to head to the ER for the ritual vein piercing, then you’re a sad-sack bit of flesh still warm only because of attentive nursing and Ringer’s Lactase drip.   Needless to say, I was in hospital during those two warm days in which I’d planned to make my final harvest of even more sprouts, kale and beets. Only the beets, after my release from the hospital, are on the menu—for the next few months, at least. After that, caution is advised regarding how much fiber goes in.  My friendly neighbor was happy to receive the two 4 foot stalks of sprouts; the kale went into the community fridge in the hopes someone wanted or knew what to do with it's dino-hide leaves.

It's sobering to realize that ingesting a raw carrot can actually be a flirtation with death. Confusing a desire "to live normally,” with how far I’m truly able to do so, slides easily into the realm of “denial.” How easy for this old lady to stray over the line!

 Juliet Waldron

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS       Amazon Author Page

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 (Photos of Day of the Dead altars at Smithsonian, Museum of the American Indian.)

 

 

 

BLACK MAGIC - An excerpt

 

(Published by surprise--but here it is while I run around like crazy, playing internet catch-up!)

 

           Goran turned and found himself standing on a high rock shelf above a hollow filled with thorns. He saw the eyes, gazing out at him. Glowing bright living eyes, like green fire! He’d only thought of the Great Boar, the eyes in the thicket down in the oak woods—and suddenly, he was there.

            I thought you might be here.

            And so I am, Great One.

            What is it about that particular rock, Held, that you like so much?

            Wanting to make some sort of an answer, Goran gazed down at his feet and then rather wished he hadn’t. It was shocking to see what they had become, legs ending in the talons of a bird of prey. The rock below was ordinary granite, dotted with a few white flecks of marble.

 

            As he did so, a little puzzled, a buzzing rush of energy blasted into his feet.

            Ah! This rock is an excellent place, full of power!

 

                                

~ Juliet Waldron ~

 

 

 

 

Buy the Book:  (I could really use a review...)

 

http://amzn.com/B00P9TW046

 

 

http://www.bookswelove.net/julietwaldron.php

 

 

The Indoor Plant Conundrum

This is the time of year when I repot my indoor plants, getting them ready for winter and the tougher, dryer, darker conditions of house living. I've had a plant called a Hoya since the summer of 1969 when we moved into our first house, a ramshackle money-pit of a farmhouse set in the middle of a Connecticut cornfield. The Hoya was given to me by the seller as a few cuttings stuck in a pot of dirt. This plant liked light, I was told, and it would create flowers once a year that had a "lovely" scent. Best place to hang it up = the bathroom. So, as a new homeowner, young housewife and would-be plant person, I followed directions. I watered the Hoya regularly and fed it, because that was how my mother-in-law took care of her plants. (As a sidebar, hers, on a steady diet of Miracle Grow(c) had grown to be Little Shop of Horrors sized monsters.)

The Hoya grew, the tough vines and rubbery leaves multiplying. The following spring, it bloomed, a white compound S/F type bloom, each single five-starred floret brightened by a red dot in the middle. Soon I realized the flowers were oozing and dripping sap all over the linoleum, sap which took some effort to scrub away. You could smell it at night, too, as promised, a heavy, sweet, rather sickening smell. ("Lovely" it was not.) Then, one by one, the florets dried. One by one they fell, scattering their little sticky brown selves all over the laundry, or whatever happened to be underneath. Every 3-4 years, the Hoya needed a complete repot, because it had filled the container  with a rock-hard root-ball, in the same way spider plants do. I dumped it out, took a few starter vines + rubbery leaves and began all over again.

This plant has lived in Connecticut (10 years), in Tennessee (4 years) and in Hershey (31 years), transported as a cutting in pots rowed up in the back of a VW bug. I have followed the life cycle, fed, watered, cleaned-up after and re-potted the Hoya many, many times.

Autumn draws on apace, and the Hoya sits on the back patio, waiting. I've stared at it many times during the last month, in those last warm days of October wondering when it would reach the top of the to-do list. Then, recently, sitting at the picnic table with Bob keeping me company (lying atop the magazine I had been reading), the Hoya caught my eye once more. Now, I have many things to tend this autumn, what with writing and all the crap that goes with it, volunteerism, meetings, pets, a husband, a house I haven't cleaned thoroughly since spring, and two gardens, neither of which I've put to bed as yet.  

I ruminated on the Hoya as the leaves of the old sugar maple drifted past. The plant sat there, pot-bound and not looking too happy at being left for so long out-of-doors in the wind and chill. Why did I go on keeping it? Simply because I had kept it for so long? Return to paragraph two, kind reader, and you will see the hard facts, the reality of owning a Hoya, which I had, for the first time, finally taken the time to inventory.

This may just be the year I get over my inability to let things go and just say the hell with it.

 

Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

See All my historical novels

 

Champlain's Dream

An author, distinguished historian David Hackett Fischer, tells us how Champlain, a pragmatic, thoughtful French explorer of the early 1600’s, experienced the cultures of the Algonquin Indians whom he encountered.  A man who’d emerged from the bloody violence of France’s religious wars with an open, rather than a closed mind, Champlain understood how to induce people of varied backgrounds to cooperate. His belief in the universal nature of humankind, whatever their nation, allowed him to approach the Indigenous Sauvage with an attitude of respect.

A dream - so ephemeral a thing! Here is one that Champlain experienced 400 + years ago in the forests north of the lake which is now named for him. With a war party of sixty Indians, he and two other Frenchmen traveled into the forbidden territory of the Iroquois, with whom the Algonquin’s were eternally at war.  They traveled at night, and every morning, as they drew closer to danger, the places where the guardians of the Eastern Gate, the Mohawk, lay in wait for their enemies, the chiefs asked Champlain “if he had dreamed about their enemies.” For many days, “no” was the answer.  Then, one morning, about 11 a.m. he awoke and called the Indians to him. At last, as they’d seemed to expect, he’d dreamed.

“I dreamed I saw in the lake near a mountain, our enemies, the Iroquois drowning before our eyes. I wanted to rescue them, but our Indian allies told me that we should let them all die, for they were worth nothing.”

David Hackett Fischer then adds: “The Indians recognized the place in Champlain’s dream as a site that lay just ahead, and they were much relieved…To Champlain’s Indian allies, dreams not only revealed the future. They controlled it.”

A few days later, the Mohawk encountered European firearms in battle for the first time. Surprised by a man in armor and two sharpshooters with long-distance, deadly weapons stationed amid the enemy’s ranks, they were defeated. Champlain’s dream, seen as a prophecy, was true.

To me it seems that Champlain, surrounded by a gigantic, primal forest and the aboriginal people who inhabited it, had moved into another kind of consciousness, one which transcended his European world view and linear time.  The chiefs were content, pleased that their new friend had dreamed so positively, while Champlain, privately, may have been amazed - and even more so in the aftermath of the battle.  

 

 

 

Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

Historical Novels

Quotes taken from Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer

A DISHWASHING RUMINATION

Today, I was in the kitchen hand-washing a few dishes. Hot water came from the tap and a nice container of blue Dawn (c) sat by the sink. As I washed, I felt slightly put out. Always some darn mess in the kitchen to clear up! If you cook at home, you clean-up at home, and as we are mostly stay-at-home eaters, that's the reality with which we live.

The water was hot, the sponge was clean--I've got a thing about changing sponges every day or so. The task was not really unpleasant. I'd already wiped away the grease from a frying pan with a paper towel and dropped that into the trash.

I've an old eco-habit of turning the water off and then turning it back on again as I repeat the cycle of wash and rinse. I reached to close the faucet with one hand, and with the other, laid the clean pot in the dish rack.

As I did this, I abruptly realized how lucky I am that this clean--potable, actually--water just comes out of my faucet simply because I turn the handle.  I can even ask that it arrive ready heated for cleaning purposes. If I drink from the cold tap, it won't taste that great and probably isn't, long term, that good for me, but even without filtering, it's not going to give me cholera or dysentery. I actually live in one of the privileged places on this planet, this despite the fact that in my wealthy town, I'm po ' folks.

I turned over in my mind scenes of women and girls daily trudging hot, dusty miles while lugging heavy pots of water simply to supply a bare minimum basic needs, then thanked my stars  that I was washing dishes in a fine stainless steel sink of a functional height with plenty of running hot water.  And although I've been washing up since I was a kid--in this life, it appears that is a an unvarying part of my destiny--for the first time, I felt a real change of heart, an attitude adjustment at a root level. From now on, I'll remind myself to feel gratitude while I wash those dishes.


~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

Historical Novels with setting that stretch from the 15th to the 19th Century

A Visit With the Mother

A small cabin sits on the shore of a quiet lake. It is made of wood, tightly constructed. One room, with a steeply pitched roof, it is snug and dry and comfortable. On the side facing the lake there is a roofed porch running the width of the cabin. Between the porch and the lake there is a picnic table, fire ring, and a few trees. I am stopping here for only two days, but even the shortest break from the busyness of home is a welcomed one. I quickly settle in.

I listen to rain fall all night, but I wake to sunlight and air that is fresh, even cool for August. After breakfast,  I set up a place on the porch. With the cooler in front of my chair, I am lounging in a lovely forest room. I pick up my laptop and begin writing. It is a revelation at first. I am using this tool for the first reason I had for buying it. It is a word processor. Without the distractions of an internet connection, it works amazingly well. I write long after noon. Lunch becomes dinner and after editing my work at the picnic table, I am ready for a break.

I return to my seat on the porch with a book – a Kindle in fact. These electric tools seem out of place, but they do not intrude on the silence. I am reading the second chapter when I notice movement on my left. I look over and down at the short space between the rails and the floor and there is the body of a black snake. The body is moving, and moving, and moving but there is no head or tail in sight. As the apparent length of this fellow dawns on me, a tiny head looks over the foot rail well around the corner, nearly in front of me. Its face has a very small rounded nose, tiny eyes, and a smooth line that is its mouth. My visitor looks rather friendly, as if this hesitant movement, and the pause during which we look into each other’s eyes, is a meeting of alien minds. We have the same needs: green leaves, blue sky, rippling water, and, well, we won’t dwell on food right now. But the need we are satisfying at the moment is companionship. Woman or snake – we all need someone with whom to enjoy this day, this sun, this world.

Finally, the snake sticks his tongue out at me and breaks the spell. I know the boy and girls at the next site would love to see this handsome snake, so I invite the family to cross our short divide of small hill and slender trees to get a look at a real, wild snake.  They rush over and check him out, ooh and aah at his size, and embarrass him right off into the woods. He reproaches me for a moment, heading toward my feet, reminding me that we might have been quiet friends. I hope he knows I love him but wanted to share him. Okay, I wanted to show him off. He disappears in moments.   

Days later, I will learn that in many cultures a snake is seen as our umbilical cord to the Mother. He was a messenger to me, reminding me that I am tethered to this Earth. In my mind, I thank the snake for blessing me with this message. I wish him many baby snakes and a long life.

When night falls, I light a small fire in my metal fire-ring. As I look at the light reflected on the leaves above me, I hear a plop in the water below me. Thinking I might have heard a ripple meeting the shore, I continue watching the fire and the lights reflecting on the far side of the lake.  The next watery sound I hear is definitely caused by a swimmer. I step down to the shoreline and place my hand against a tree to steady myself. I wait for a while but find myself enjoying this moment without added drama. The tree’s bark is surprisingly smooth and warm to my touch. I think of her roots, deep in the ground, drinking happily from the muddy water inches from her trunk. Some low branches brush  the surface of the lake, and I imagine all the life that might be sleeping, eating, or simply being there in the shelter of her green leaves and small stems. I share her view across the lake and I listen for anything she might like to tell me.

The idea that occurrs to me, after a motionless time, is “eternity.”  The knowledge that this tree will grow while these stars shine and this water whispers for a time I cannot measure fills me with a fullness, a roundness. I cannot describe the happiness I feel at being a small part of such a vast existence. There is comfort in seeing and being and letting it be enough of a contribution in this quadrillionth of a speck of eternity. So I tell the tree, “Thank you for this blessing.”  And I bring this interlude with me when I return to my busy life – always there, always inviting me to return. When I experience my oneness with our Mother, there is no need for anything more.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT...by Orb Weaver

by Orb Weaver--an old friend who wishes to remain anonymous--
about the effect of daily knives in the heart

 

 

Do not go gentle into that good night…

 

 

This has been a wretched week, not just for me, but certainly for all of humanity.  Wars rage on throughout the Middle East, and thousands of Yazidi refugees perch on a mountain in Iraq, their only crime their choice of religion; the streets in Ferguson, Missouri are blazing in retaliation for yet another shooting of an unarmed young black man by a white police officer; half of the continent is flooded, the other half is in drought and/or on fire; and Robin Williams finally lost his long battle against depression and addiction.  To me, that was the worst of the lot, the rug pulled out from under one of the brightest stars in the universe in a cosmic vaudeville-like stichk, but without the laughter to break the fall. 

 

 

No one saw it coming.  Really?  I was shocked beyond speech, yet not surprised.  I have watched his manic antics for over thirty years, laughing until I could not breathe, and yet … and yet … there was something else there, something sad, something scary, that he struggled to conceal, to fight, to push under the surface.  His genius was undeniable, like others before him.  Richard Pryor.  Freddie Prinz.  Andy Kaufman.  Lenny Bruce.  John Belushi.  All of them absolutely bat-shit crazy, and Robin was their King.  Without exception, they all suffered from depression and addictions, and in the end, they all lost their battles.

Let me tell you what I know.  I know about depression.  I know about addiction.  And I know that I could never explain it completely to anyone who has not experienced it firsthand.  Knowing someone who suffers from either or both doesn’t count; not even if they are a blood relative, not your brother, your sister, your mother, your father, your child.  Because all you know or see or experience is the fallout from the illness.  And that won’t explain it for you, because you’re probably tired of dealing with the family drunk or the neighbor nutbag, or your teenager who just seems to be in a rage all the time, for no good reason.  Your only question seems to be “Why?”  It’s like riding a Harley; if I have to explain it, you wouldn’t understand anyway. 

I was diagnosed with clinical depression in my late ‘teens, although I know I suffered from it way before that, as far back as elementary school.  Happiness didn’t exist for me but people didn’t understand that.  I was smart, I was talented, I was a loser.  I had hints of personality disorders.  It was the ‘60s.  Enough said.

I’ve been on medication for years.  A couple of times I’ve attempted to wean myself off the antidepressants and the sleep meds, to no avail.  The affliction is truly worse than the cure; and at my age, all I want is to get through the day, and sleep through the night.  If I don’t take the meds, I crash, very quickly.  My brain chemistry goes into freefall.  I spend days in bed, in the dark.  I withdraw completely, from friends and family alike, with no explanation.  How do I explain what I don’t understand?  I cry.  Or I laugh inappropriately.  Everything in the world seems lost, without redemption, and it seems pointless to keep struggling.  I have had one very close call with suicidal ideation; I spent several hours late one night, by the water, with my .38 pressed so tightly against my forehead that the barrel left a red, circular indentation that lasted for days.  Even though it’s long gone, I can still see it when I look into the mirror.  It’s a constant reminder to me of just how bad it can get.  I believe that was a Waterloo moment for me that for some reason I was able to overcome.  I do not think about the next time.  I am a total work in progress; an hour at a time.

I have learned, through the years, that most folks consider depression a self-induced pity party, and tend to offer suggestions in the line of “Shape up,” or “Things will get better,” or, my favorite, “Count your blessings.”  I have also learned to ignore these directives, because while I believe them to be for the most part well-intentioned, they are also worthless.  If Robin Williams could not save himself, what chance have I?

And so, I compensate.  I use the good days to be creative, to try and be functional.  I read, I sew, I quilt, I listen to music.  I sit on my porch and listen to the owls and the peepers and all the things that go bump in the night.  I go sit by the ocean and pray for dolphins.  And I get by.  I wish that someone, somehow, had been able to save Robin, not by reaching out, but by reaching in. 

Forget about trees for a while; hug someone crazy instead.

 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. by Orb Weaver

Orb Weaver, friend and fellow feminist--aka no one's doormat--has her say.

                 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

 

 

In 1839 Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, French critic, journalist and novelist, became editor of Le Figaro, to which he had been a constant contributor; and he also started a monthly journal, Les Guêpes, of a keenly satirical tone, a publication which brought him the reputation of a somewhat bitter wit. His famous epigram is frequently quoted, usually translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same," (Les Guêpes, January 1849).  The news out of Washington in the last 48 hours once again has proven that to be true.

 

Once again, our Supreme Court has managed to bitch-slap women back into the last century.  By finding in favor of the Plaintiff, Hobby Lobby, owned by hard-core fundamentalist Bible-thumpers (who also happen to be multi-millionaires), the Court once again failed to separate Church and State by allowing business owners whose alleged religious beliefs do not support contraception and/or freedom of choice for women to opt out of the provision of Obama Care that requires insurance coverage for birth control.  The cost of birth control pills in this country ranges from $50 to $150 a month, depending on manufacturer, dosage, etc.  In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg noted that "It bears note in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month's full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage." Since the majority of employees of Hobby Lobby are women, it means that these employees, already having difficulty supporting themselves (and in many cases, families) on minimum wage, will now be forced to pay for contraceptives to avoid pregnancies (and the resulting children) that they certainly cannot afford.   

 

Having been on the front lines in the ‘60s and ‘70s during the Women’s Rights movement, I am having trouble processing the idea that we have come full circle back to the beginning.  Worse, I fear that today’s young women do not grasp the fact that what they have always believed to be their rights, having been born after the fight, could very possibly have just taken the first backward steps to returning them to chattel property status.  Barefoot and pregnant, ladies.  And in the kitchen, not in the business world.   If you’re not outraged, you’re not  paying attention. 

 

And on the other side of town, President Obama issued an Executive Order to send an additional 300 troops into Iraq, bringing the total to 750.  As advisors.  And observers.  This is frighteningly similar to the first U.S. advisors sent to Viet Nam in 1959.  By 1962, the number had increased from 700 to 12,000.  We all know how that turned out.  This case is almost worse, inasmuch as we have already been there and done that, and the V.A. system is already overwhelmed by the ongoing result of a war fought for non-existent weapons of mass destruction.  The entire Middle East is in chaos, and just to add insult to injury, Israel will probably flatten the entire Gaza Strip in retaliation on Hamas for the murder of three teenagers who went missing two weeks ago.

 

It has occurred to me that my entire life has been lived in a state of war.  World War II was underway when I was born, and segued neatly into Korea.  The first rumblings were already being heard in Indochina as the “police action” in Korea wound down.  In 1954, and by the time the name changed (to Viet Nam, both North and South), we were once again embroiled in someone else’s business, which went on until 1975, when we left Saigon in shambles and ran for our lives.  Since then, we have rattled sabres in Grenada, Lebanon, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Libya, Panama, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War, Somalia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.  In doing so, we have killed and/or maimed hundreds of thousands of people, good and bad, innocent and guilty.  The Marines have a saying:  “Kill’em all and let God sort’em out.”  Really?   My favorite poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, had a saying of her own.  “Peace,” she wrote, “is the temporary beautiful ignorance that war somewhere progresses.”  True dat.   

 

The final blow to our collective moral conscience is in the celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, a man much maligned and terribly burdened by an office that did not realize his worth at the time.  On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed into law an Act that is still under attack from various and sundry elements at every opportunity.  Racism is as alive and well today as it was in Mississippi in 1964.  There is as much discrimination now as then; it has simply changed its methods, not its basic philosophy.  Hate crimes continue to occur, and the haters have developed various and unique means of taking away the voting rights of minorities and cloak them in the guise of defeating voting fraud.  Boss Tweed must be laughing in his grave.  Our inner cities are crumbling in crime and economic decay.  Children still go hungry.  Guns rule.

 

And every news program has led with the one story that seems to trump all others:  World Cup Soccer.  Priorities.  Not our strong suit.  Never was.  Never will be.  Bring on the asteroid.  We won’t see that one coming, either.

 

 

 

 

 

~~~~~~ORB WEAVER