Those damn seeds

Tamar's husband died leaving her with no children. According to a law that scholars today call "levirate marriage" that meant that her husband's brother was supposed to take her to wife and make sure that she had an heir who would provide social protection for his mother. The son took her, and then "spilled his seed" upon the ground, meaning he enjoyed her body up to the point of satisfaction and then denied her the only thing that she needed out of the contrived relationship, the possibility to have a child. It is possibly a story of rape, you know how unyielding these ancient texts can be, we pull at their dead-animal enscrolled corners and try to decipher the codes of the transcendent runes, but still we are left what in the world they are saying at point.

But whatever the euphemisms present or direct interpretation possible, the dude (Tamar's brother-in-law lover) was struck dead. Bounce ahead millennia upon millenia and it is considered an unacceptable version of birth control to "spill your seed." Wasting of that which can create life is haram (forbidden) to God. No surprise really, if anything is filled with transcendent power it is life force and the ability to create.

So as I was vacuuming up the seed of my flowering fern today I was wondering how broken of an act I was doing ever so casually. With a deafening energy-draining suck-a-rama machine I was ending the possibility of propagation of a plant. And how many thousands of times have I done exactly the same act and not considered it? I don't expect this tree hugging moment to go viral around facebook. Heaven knows that there are more people worried about bearing children today rather than finding themselves in the shoes/sandals/bare feet of Tamar of old. Heaven knows that my own husband has spilled seed in an attempt for us not to be the father and mother of a nation (the crowing blessing of Abraham and Sarah). Pesticides, "weed" (aka wildflowers for wishes) killer, the pill, these all share the same poison--they are the preventers of unwanted life.

Hilariously enough, those who rally to protect the wildflowers are eager to end the human love-child and those who adore the embryos are spraying their grasses with the toxins to kill ladybugs, birds, and even their own babes who will crawl on toxic greenery. Whatever side a person falls on there is some form of life that most are eager to prevent. So empathy for those seeds of the fern is not going to be abundant, but I wonder how Tamar would have seen it. Would she have seen this as a tragedy of possible life? She who was willing to put on the dress of a harlot and entice her father-in-law into her room so that the circle of life would keep rolling, I think she would have ripped open the canister-dead-womb of the Hoover and found fertile soil.

She'elah

When I daydream of life as a child I get that thrilled-almost-sour-stomach feeling of anticipation in getting caught. I never got "caught" at anything as a child because I never did anything worth catching. Well, there was that one time that my brother Chris and I snuck into the nighty drawer and found all of those bright shades of lace and the tuxedo shaped underwear protruding like a giraffe. We did that, and got caught.

Childhood was a time of impressing the rule makers for me. Whether they were at home or school or church or if they were the unknown unnamed authorities. I was obedient to the "they" of society. I would shined the shoes of the firemen just because they had a uniform. Authority and civil obedience was something that seemed easier than rebellion.

But when I dream of being a child, all I ever see in my mind's eye is the never performed acts of mischief (that I darned not do but so did desire). The most often dreamed dream is sneaking spaghetti from the kitchen at 6am; enjoying the savory when breakfast was usually the saccharine pop-tart. All the while looking for shadows coming round the doorway or clicks of doorknobs being twisted I will slurp the red sauce until it splatters on the once-white-now-cream-no-yellow gown. The slimy remains of fat from the non-drained ground meat on the roof of my mouth that others find disgusting--I run my tongue on it again and again. To this day I eat spaghetti furtively in my own kitchen every morning after such a dinner, and look at the door in fear that someone will catch me. This sounds like I was a suppressed child. The no-refrigerator rules were generated after all of the meat in the freezer thawed after us kids left it open searching for ice-cream. It was not from tyrannic, just pissed-off parents. But even though my preferred  breakfast would have been eggs or chocolate milk or yogurt I would not violate the code of kitchen honor. Cabinet pressed pies destined for a toaster it was.

This kind of perfection in action spread into school performance. I was the valedictorian even as the 30 students with lower GPA's had greater intellect. I knew how to follow the rules, jump through the hoops, and make a teacher proud. Years of extra-credit and special exceptions to take courses at the local university translated into an astronomical average grade-point.

In the holy halls I knew only the right hand could touch the sacred supper. And I also knew that if someone used their left hand that social norms dictated that I would not sneer although every inch of me was appalled that they could take the body of God with the anciently defiled hand.

I guess this is the coming-of-age paragraph. For most it involves puffing in or on sheets with a beloved or belusted. For me, I became an adult the day that I heard the president of my religious university equate keeping the laws of the land with following God. He said it was a manifestation of faith to stand and watch for the blinky-walky-man at the crosswalk instead of jaunt across when the road was empty of all but birds and other people rushing off to their classes.

A day after this devotional message I went to the crosswalk and I looked for God all around. I looked for him in the sky, but it was covered in grey clouds with no linings. I looked for her in the trees, but they were dormant with winter. I looked for God in the yellow, electronic, metallic, tweeting pedestrian box; and I laughed. God? God is not here. God might be in the mountain slumbering in a cave, but within me is far-more immortal than any rule.

It was better than sex. The complete relief of I, Herculesa, dropping the world of law and laying it as an holy sacrifice on the mustard-striped cross-walk of University Avenue.

Childhood had fled.

Feeling the wind pick up and fresh air replace the stale exhaust of an inverted winter, I knew this was a shift of life; As I crossed the street, while the red-hand shone bright in the foot-traffic box I started singing a song. I don't know if it was Lennon's Free as a Bird or Gloria Estavan's olympic hymn If I Could Reach but it was a blatant song about freedom and defeating your own innards for that freedom. Then someone behind me joined in with the harmony. It was a deeper voice and I was thinking how the timing of meeting my one true love could not be better because I was at least momentarily willing and craving to break every law I had ever held high, chastity being the most enjoyable one to flaunt.

But she had red hair and a bright smile to match cello-voice accompaniment. And she was exactly what I needed to get me through a diagnosis of a disease that banned me from eating the Lord's Holy Supper (with my right hand) thanks to gluten intolerance and questioning the most fundamental magic within my faith, that of eternal families. She'elah was my new best friend.

Post #4 Sure Shape-Shifting

I know that this novel will be about magic, but I want it to be about the magic that I experience. I want it to be fantastical real. I don't mean warm fuzzy feelings or falling in love. Those have magic elements certainly, but I mean the way I watch children shape-shift. I have seen many little humans try with all of their non-formed biceps to cram their foots into Barbie cars or put a head in (always eye first) into a doll-house. I still have the cutout of a John Deer tractor add that my son spent hour after hour gently touching expecting to feel the cold of the green metal and I remember thinking that I could smell the gasoline exhaust when he focused hard enough.

A foundational premise that exists in all of this telling is that children have a pure wisdom, and like a dreamwalker, they are just able to see things the way they really are in a way the rest of us have lost. If children are certain that they can shape-shift to become the size of items that they hold in their hand, I believe it. But if I believed it more completely I could do it too.


From Patricia McKillip, "I write fantasy because it's there.  I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination.  Daydreaming.   Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places.  Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps.  It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.   Making it tell the same tale over and over again makes it thin and whining; its scales begin to fall off; its fiery breath becomes a trickle of smoke.  It is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent; there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination.  It must be visited constantly, or else it begins to become restless and emit strange bellows at embarrassing moments; ignoring it only makes it grow larger and noisier.  Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales.  There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it:  in writing, in art.   Those who fear the imagination condemn it:  something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten.  Not all of us dream awake.  But those of us who do have no choice."

Post #3 Birds in the park

Where I live there is a giant green space with planted ancient (looking) trees all in lines. It is a vast space of sharp blades (that no one ever walks on-abominable sidewalks) and these fat-base trees looking like candlesticks that were left on too long and have a collection of wax at the bottom.

It is a lovely spot, families picnick-ing and children laughing and people with sexual tension strolling around with furtive glance. And bird song. So many birds I can hear at this park.It was sometime after I had fallen in love with this spot of peace that I learned the birds were fabricated. 

No, I do not mean that there are stuffed birds squalking as in the old Disney Pirates of Caribbean. But the songs of the birds have been recorded, probably from some aviary thousands of miles away, and their croons and tweets are piped in through loud speakers.

There is of course nothing illegal about creating a false magic scene. Perhaps it is even kind to build a place where we can all commune with nature, but for some reason it feels like it should be illegal. It seems a violation to make us think that there are creatures of flight surrounding us when truly there is only a disk on repeat.

When something shocking happens in your life everything becomes a metaphor and a reminder for the shock. As when someone dies and all bad things for the next month remind you of your sadness, likewise all good moments remind you that you shouldn't feel good in this time of grief. I say this because I realize it is ridiculous that the bird soundtrack should remind me of my mother, but they do.

She was my safety net. For ages, seeming immortal, she was my safety net. It was mom and me against the world (isn't that a song from the 70's). She was my magic and my hero and my hope for what the world could be if I lived up to my full potential. And now I don't know her, I wonder if she was just on repeat mode. Maybe she was a feigning flightless bird that was fooling me for years and suddenly took flight without leaving a trace.

The magic of the world has fled.

I am a young mother now and why my relationship with my childhood confidant (aka "Momma") means so much to me, I feel I should make some kind of excuse for this kind of dependence. I have married and moved into the castle (or mini-apartment) on the hill (or sand-dune) with my prince. Why does she matter more now than ever before? And why does she not seem to care that her loss to me is jarring and violent and soul shaking? How could she think it would be anything else?

And so I am going to go and try to find a park with birds. Real ones. Maybe there will be a matriarch there waiting who is craving a daughter.

Post #2 The soil of my houseplant

I learned yesterday on “Radio Lab NPR” that half of all of the oxygen in the world is made by a war of tiny bacteria on the surface of the ocean. You can even see it from space—blooms and plumes of fighting unicaryotes. I’ve been breathing in this breath, watching my chest rise, fall, become scratchy and bubbled during sickness, and ache with the burn of sucked in wheezes for decades now and never knew where that oxygen originated.

I don’t believe it, that the algae or bacteria or whatever it is with little white shield-looking-scales produce my air.

It is this houseplant.

When the outside air of methane production become the sewer in floating form I stuff towels in the edges of the windows and pray under this tree. She will clean it all before my little ones with their inadvertent huffing absorb all that is floating in the air. But this tree will make it safe for them. And her soil. It is dirt. Yep, dirt. And it is relics of the ancient with ground seashells. It is the made of the rock that held up Jacob’s head as he dreamed he was climbing the ladder to God. It is the dirt that lovers have hovered over creating new life in their hearts and secret parts. This soil has my dead ancestors dancing in it. Those are the glittering spots that you might have been taught is called mica. They are winking at us saying, “what an incredible moment you are living in surrounded by all of us under your feet and floating in the dust and bedding these plants that allow you to breath even as the dinosaur bones are being burned to fuel your cars. A wonderful moment, even your dirt sparkles, even your dirt carries God and Love and Remembrance.”

Post #1 Turkish Delight lead me here

I enter with shaking thrill and confidence into this long time ambition. To tip and tap a dream is absurd. To tip and tap my insides onto virtual glow is reckless. To tip and tap after years of imagining this thing is my scarlet letter. “P” for procrastinator rather than an “A” mounted on my factory assembled cotton shirt rather than the lapel of a homespun tunic.

Maybe it was the Turkish Delight purchased in the duty free store as we were leaving Istanbul connecting me to CS Lewis and the Narnians. Or my son’s continual speech and belief that he is a Basilika, a creature only elves can see, but I am ubiquitously alive with magic and at this moment it is so overwhelming that I must write of it.

My belief transcends (and weirdly enough includes) the enjoyment of imagining us all in Hogwarts or running in the forests with the vegetarian vampires of Stephanie Meyer. Goldfish and trees coming to the mystical aid of the Japanese in the studio Gibli films, I have this hardwired through popculture, every other aspect of that material system I have rejected. The rejection of fuel required to be skinny enough for the newest trends, the addiction to the newest techno device (still don’t know how to text and the mobile was lost for good [pun intended] while in the labyrinthine ground transport of the airport in Doha, Qatar). The other messages of popular practice that I learn or refuse to learn (screw you facebook and your constant encouragements for me to know the favorite New York Times articles of my “friends” ) and yet I am in the net and web and the less caught spots—I am in the womb and home of magic. Captured and nestled as a believer.

Can I be a part of something beautiful? Something so lovely and unpredictable and majestic in its slow churning.