My mother has said this to me about a million times.

And I hate it . . .

Mostly because it feels so true.

I am in the throes of passion, rebellion,

frustration at the world at large,

irritation with several specific people in the world at large.

And reliving all this—again—is no more fun

than it was the first time.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky—

Some people don’t seem to make it past the age of 2.

But I’d really like to be an adult someday.

Trust myself.  Be comfortable with the body that sometimes seems well past its 31 years and the emotions that are perennially stuck at 14.

I’d like to be responsible.  No waffling.  No squirming.

I live up the road from FDR’s house, and almost every day for several weeks now I’ve had to drive by one of Eleanor’s quotes they’ve got posted out front: “Determine one’s position, state it bravely, and then act boldly.”  

To which my response is usually: “Grrrrrrrrr.” 

But that just reminds me of my cat Golda growling as she looks out the window, and my mother going outside to chase away the cat that’s causing Golda’s anxiety.  My mother can’t find the cat, so she comes back inside only to realize that, in the dim light, Golda is, in fact, growling at her own reflection.

    So, I guess no nook-y for me.  (I’m sorry, I really couldn’t resist.)

    What I had really intended to say when I started writing this posting was that, due to many varied reasons, I am going to take a hiatus from blog writing.  It may be a very short one (since, as evidenced above, I have an opinion about nearly everything and can’t keep my mouth shut for long).  And it may simply be that my posting will be more sporadic from now on, but I’m giving myself permission to take a cue from the change of seasons and huddle down into an earthy hole, move a little slower, and expect a little less. 

    Thanks to all of you for reading so faithfully and supportively.  Read and/or write on!

    But I have to say that simply the notion that people are working on this, that they haven’t given up on folks like me, is almost too hopeful for words.  I’ve never imagined this moment would come—when scientists would be this close to identifying a causal agent for my illness.  It has seemed altogether too farfetched.  And I’m not sure why.  Perhaps it is that I still am haunted consciously or unconsciously by the notion that my sickness is not real, that really, I am just a slacker. 

    Or maybe it’s just that I gave up on allopathic medicine a long time ago.  Or perhaps, more accurately, 16 years ago, it seemed to give up on me.  Over the intervening years, I have gotten used to conventional medicine being unhelpful to me.  There is no bitterness in that statement.  In fact, I have often felt that there must be something wrong with my chemistry or my way of being that has caused me to be incurable in so many different ways.  My expectations of doctors have become so measly that when, in the past few years, a medication has proven effective (for non-CFS ailments), I have been genuinely surprised.  

    And now I look at this magnificent picture of a remarkable organism that may even now be coding and recoding itself into my DNA—making itself one with me.  I should feel violated, but strangely, I don’t.  It looks like roses to me and again, I can’t help it, it is beautiful to me.  Not that beautiful things can’t be deadly or, at the very least, extremely annoying.  Beautiful does not equal good.  Truth maybe, but not good. 

    I have long thought of my body as a fluid community of cells, rather than a solid, individual being.  Consequently, I have tried to coax my cells to health—with words, with imagined light beamed into uncooperative places, with a sense of love that I hoped would penetrate to the heart of even the most stubborn malady.  I have reasoned with them: “Hey guys we’re all in this together.”  Apologized to them:  “I am so sorry about putting us all through that experience, but please don’t punish me for it now.”  And I know that with this idea of a retrovirus fresh in my mind, I am bound to start talking to it as well—whether or not it is actually there.  “Hello, Rosy the Retrovirus, would you mind taking up a little less room?  It’s getting a little crowded in here.”  Perhaps I should be more forceful: “Get the hell out, and take your new DNA code with you!” 

    Aye, there’s the rub.  Once a retrovirus has gotten its little claws in you, there isn’t any going back.  I remember the sadistic little grin my Neuropsych prof donned as she explained to us that curing HIV (also a retrovirus) was impossible because it infiltrates one’s genome so completely that the host cells don’t even realize that they are replicating anything but their own original code.

    As I understand it, current HIV treatments work by inhibiting the retrovirus’ progression.  But, as my professor pointed out, this is only a stopgap measure.  The virus is still present and, in fact, becomes a part of the host’s self on a very basic level.  So if I do have XMRV, it is, right now, a genuine part of me.  Of course, there are a lot of individuals inside of me right now that I would classify as not me—a plethora of helper and hurter microorganisms simply doing what I myself am: trying to live as well as possible.  I don’t think this is what religious people mean when they say, “You are never alone,” but it’s so true.  Forget about God, I carry a whole population of me-s and not me-s around with me wherever I go. (Come to think of it, where is the “I” in all of this?—Best leave that one for another day.)

    Can we live in peace?  I don’t know.  I’m guessing not, though—since the prosperity of many of these organisms means illness or even death for me.  Whether or not I am aware of it, I am probably, as I write this, making war inside my body. 

    And this is all natural—which, if you believe those labels on cereal boxes, means it must be good.  You know, like hemlock and black holes.  And like that picture of XMRV—natural, beautiful—and, if those scientists are right, one major pain in the ass.

To read more about XMRV and see its picture go here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113613955

    Many people—too many people—over the course of time, have decided to perpetuate the notion that knitting is relaxing, soothing, a restful way to pass the time.  I have to admit that I have been one of those people.  And it is true that when one’s nerves are raw from sitting in one too many doctors’ offices, it is comforting to have something to occupy one’s hands and mind.  Order can be restored to a chaotic world through the gratifying binary assuredness of knit and purl.

    That is, until you make a mistake.  Okay, one mistake is not so bad.  Everyone makes mistakes; you just go back and fix it.  So what if it means ripping out three rows?  It’s not a big deal.

    Until you make another mistake.  Two mistakes is not a lot, but it’s a little frustrating that you weren’t paying better attention to what you were doing so that you could have seen you’re misstep right when you made it. 

    The third mistake is where it starts to get ugly.  The yarn is starting to fuzz from having been ripped out so many times, but really, it’s okay, you are learning and really, isn’t that what it’s all about? 

    Sure, and after ten years, I’ve made enough mistakes to be a master knitter by now—though I’m not.

    I started making a hat last Thursday.  It was going to be a quick, fun project before I went back and tackled the Fair Isle vest I’ve been avoiding since August.  This is the vest that I nearly finished at least twice before having to dismantle almost all of it and start again.  The one that needs me only to knit the neck and shoulders, but whose completion involves picking up stitches evenly which can be a whole other nightmare I won’t even get into.  The one that will probably be too small for me when I actually get up the gumption to finish it.

    So I started the hat—a lovely, tweed, cabled tam from the same wool with which I had just successfully completed a beautiful shawl in just over a week and a half.  This should be no sweat, I thought.  But the knitting gods are capricious and really, I think, just a bit cruel.  This past weekend I worked and reworked the hat as I watched the final games of my beloved Mets heartbreaking 2009 season.  Maybe it was because I had become a little cocky.  Maybe St. Augustine is in among the knitting deities and has insisted that I be purified of my ignoble sin of pride, but that hat that should have taken only a few hours to make is still yet to be finished.  I made a grand push Sunday night.  By the end of the Jets/Saints game, I had begun to decrease (knitter speak for “I see a light at the end of the tunnel!”), and I thought, I’ll just stay up until I’m done.  Three national parks later (Ken Burns The National Parks: America’s Best Idea on PBS), I realized that I had made yet another error.  I put it down, resigned.  This is something I have learned during my knitting tenure.  After a certain number of missteps, it’s best just to let it rest awhile.

    And so it sits on my ottoman in the living room, waiting.  I will finish it, probably this week.  I don’t know what it’ll end up looking like, but another thing I’ve learned is that if you want to create something beautiful, you have to be willing to crash and burn—a lot.  I’ll finish the hat.  And I’ll make peace with the knitting pantheon, because I know in my heart of hearts that they are only trying to do me a favor.  They know what I need to be doing right now (write now!) and knitting is not it.

    I love shredding my old drafts of writing and commending them to the compost as well. I like that my words find their way into my mother’s garden—that her work and mine are united somehow in a dually poetic and mundane way. I know that my words will be safe in the compost. I can trust the microbes to chew them gently, to keep the secrets of my ill formed ideas, my inelegant turns of phrase. I love putting my old drafts onto the compost because it feels hopeful to me. So I didn’t get it right this time; it’s okay, out of these efforts will grow new seeds—all the more fertile for the nutrients offered up by their predecessors.

    I love the unexpected things that grow out of composts. This year, it was a gargantuan pumpkin plant that crept carefully out of luscious soil and crawled all over the backyard. It is no wonder to me that fairytales deal in pumpkins. They are among the most enchanted looking plants—the determined corkscrews that grip, the huge silver-green leaves tenting the new fruit, the lead branch that rears up like a preying mantis as it explores the world.

    It nearly always irritates me when I watch a TV show or movie that uses Tarot cards as a storytelling device. Believe me, I get the draw; tarot cards are exciting and magical. But they are not as spooky (if at all) as all those film representations would have us believe. What really irks me is when, inevitably, the final card is turned over and, once again, it is the Death card. As the audience, we are meant to be frightened, put on our guard, for here it is, death is coming. But the truth is, in real-life Tarot, the Death card rarely signifies a physical death, it is simply a harbinger of change—often of a positive nature. I think Michael Tierra and Candis Cantin describe it best in their book The Spirit of Herbs: A Guide to the Herbal Tarot (1993). “Death of the old is necessary for the new to emerge. The old is like a compost heap, full of rich experiences from which new forms emerge.”

    I love this idea. It is clear that we must live in the present. There is no time other than right now, but it is also true that our personal histories do inform each present moment—but it doesn’t follow that this impact must be negative. That rotten, inedible tomato from long ago can produce a therapeutic echinacea flower if only we have the patience and stillness to let the past break down—to discard the unusable parts, and sift through to find the portions that are still nutrient-rich and ready to contribute to the marvel of growing something new and beautiful.

    An important, but difficult question for me.  Important, because you hear so many anecdotes about people who have cured themselves of all nature of horrible disease with laughter.  Difficult, because much of what passes for comedy these days just doesn’t cut it for me.  I’ve tried the laughter as medicine thing; it hasn’t worked out very well. 

    But, when I read that question, I found that I really wanted to have an answer for it.  And then, when I started to think about it, I realized I have more than a few favorite laughs.  Here’s sampling:

    When my mother says “meow” because she hasn’t understood what I’ve just said.

    The whole of the play The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), but especially the bit where the guy playing Ophelia complains about not wanting to put on “dry, boring, vomitless Shakespeare”.

    The website http://icanhascheezburger.com/ (thank you Lisa!)

    My three-year-old niece telling knock-knock jokes.  She’s probably the funniest person I know, and such a master of laughter, she doesn’t need a punch line.  “Knock, knock.”  “Who’s there?”  We never get further than this.  The ritual itself is funny to her.  She knows she’s supposed to laugh, so she does.  And, although it may be forced at first, it soon becomes wholly genuine.  So, of course, I have to laugh too, because child-laughter is so infectious. 

    The same niece’s rendition of “Why did the chicken cross the road?”  The answer: to visit her sister.  I’m not sure why this is funny to me, but it is. 

    A game I used to play with her older sister when she was about the same age.  “Go to sleep!” she would order me.  Obediently, I would close my eyes and begin to snore.  Not more than a few seconds later she would shriek, “Wake up!” to which I would start violently, open my eyes, and make a surprised noise.  This never failed to make her laugh—and again, I had to follow suit.  She continued to command my slumber and wakefulness over and over, and somehow, though I did get tired from my hijinks, the joke didn’t get old.  It actually got funnier and funnier. 

    When my brother, some weeks after having bought me the book Who Moved My Cheese (don’t ask) for my birthday, inquired if I had located said dairy product yet.  And I replied, “No, but I’m pretty sure YOU took it!” and he laughed out loud.

    The fact that tennis player Rafael Nadal and my cat Luna make identical snarly facial expressions.

    When one of our resident squirrels climbs a sunflower in our yard and ignores all of the sturdy stalks bearing flowers well within reach, instead choosing to pursue a smaller bloom on a limb far too delicate for its weight and inevitably falls ignominiously to the ground.

    When, after hitting the deck, the aforementioned squirrel looks around to make sure nobody is watching.

    The part in Dame Agatha Christie’s autobiography where she fends off an Italian Casanova determined to sleep with her by reminding him that she’s British and, therefore, naturally frigid.

    When both of our cats look out the window with the exact same posture and turn their heads at the exact same moment.  (Really, pretty much anything our cats do is funny.)

    When my mother giggles because I have fast forwarded a video tape too far so that I have overshot the beginning of a TV show, and I have to rewind footage of people walking downstairs so that it looks like they are going up backward really fast.  (She likes horses going backward too).

    When my sister and I, as children, used to stare at each other across the kitchen table and dare each other not to laugh by saying these words: “You made me laugh.  Do you know what happens to people who make me laugh?”  I have no earthly idea from whence we got those lines or why we found them funny, but invariably one of us would bust up—thereby being the loser of our little game.  But I think, even then, our objective wasn’t competition.  It was simply to laugh.  As though laughter were not, as my adult-self would have me believe, simply an incidental part of life, but a worthwhile and even necessary pursuit, all on its own.  Perhaps laughter is not optional in this life; it’s mandatory.

    In a way, it’s funny (weird, not hah-hah) that I have spent so much time looking around for comedies and such to make me laugh, when perhaps really what’s needed is simply an opening of my laughter chakra (I just made that up—I have no idea if there is such a thing), a cultivation of the willingness to laugh.  To not sit there like the queen with a hard mouth, daring the court jester to impress me. 

    There’s a man at the diner my mother and I frequent who knows all about being open to laughter.  He’s so generous with it that he genuinely laughs at all my jokes—no pity chuckles, no groans—just pure enjoyment.  It’s as though he walks around ready, just waiting to be amused.  He’s like my niece—a laughing master—and a wonderful teacher.

    What’s your favorite laugh?

To learn more about interesting, exciting, and vomit-ful Shakespeare go here: http://www.reducedshakespeare.com/

To read about laughter as medicine go here: http://www.laughteryoga.org/

Someone who knows how to laugh!

    I suppose this is a bit out of bounds given the stated topic of this posting, and especially given the fact that I have one of the mothers of all invisible illnesses, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but I tend to find awareness days and weeks and months rather tedious.  It’s hard to summon up a whole lot of concern for the plight of others who aren’t directly related to you in some way. 

    Then again, given the high incidence of invisible illness, you probably are affected by them.  Just off the top of my head, I can think of three other people in my life who have or have had such diseases.  My godmother has lupus.  My sister, cancer.  My cousin Sarah was born with internal physical defects that caused her death before she reached adolescence. 

    This was some twenty years ago now, but I still remember going on outings with her.  Sarah was a few years my senior, so I looked up to her emotionally, but her energy was so compromised that she sometimes had to sit in a stroller, causing many stares and even ungracious comments from passers-by.  I remember, even at a very young age, feeling indignant at their appraisal of my brave cousin.  Why didn’t they even try to understand?  How brittle were their imaginations that they couldn’t stretch them enough to envisage a good, logical reason why an older child might need the assistance of a set of wheels?  And the worst part is, my cousin was not oblivious to their estimations.  So, not only did she have to deal with the physical difficulties her body presented her, she had to combat the unkind thoughts and words of others.  When I think of it now, I still get mad.  I get mad because, unlike her physical maladies, that extra pain she felt was completely avoidable.  I get mad because those people did not intend to be mean or hurtful.  They would have been mortified if they’d known the truth.  I get mad because they looked at the scene and did not challenge themselves to find anything but the simplest, readiest explanation for what they saw.  And I just think, really, we are better than that. 

    In reality, “invisible illnesses” are not truly invisible.  You just have to look closer to see them.  Like a few days ago, when I was shopping with my mother and sister for vitamins.  The saleswoman had been nice enough, but I had gotten a strange vibe off her which translated for me (as it often does) to “for some reason she doesn’t like me (us).”  I mentioned as much to my mother later, and she told me, “Oh, no.  She was having terrible neck pain.”  My amazing and observant mother had noticed the way the women kept rubbing her neck, had glimpsed the stick-on heating pack residing there, and had asked her gently, “You must be in a lot of pain, huh?”  And the woman had melted with grateful acceptance of my mother’s acknowledgement.  The thought of this interchange softens me as much as the remembrances of my cousin’s experiences cause me to harden.  It cost my mother nothing to extend a half-second of understanding to this woman who, in spite of her woes, was doing her job to the best of her ability.  My mother didn’t have to do anything backbreaking to make a positive difference in the saleswoman’s day—not take away her burdens, not solve her problems—just recognize that the woman was having a rough time.

    There have been people who have done this for me in my life.  I would like to say there have been a lot, but that would be untrue.  And I get it.  I do.  We all have problems staring us in the face, and it’s difficult to look beyond them into someone else’s sorrows.  To compound matters, when people are open to it, I often have difficulty explaining CFS to others.  It’s so big and complex that I often find myself somewhat muddled when I talk about it (the brain fuzz it causes doesn’t help either).  The only way I can think of to give you an idea of what it’s like, is to give you a little assignment that might help to replicate the difficulties I have experienced:

    Okay, today, I want you to go for a five mile run (10, if you’re in good shape), do about twelve 200m repeats, and 50 or so push-ups.  Then, I want you to eat approximately 12 donuts, have 3 or more beers, and listen to blaring loud Techno for four hours in a room full screaming bright light and a smell that is completely noxious to you (gasoline always works for me—or too much cologne, too much cologne is truly lethal).  Then, I want you to pull an all-nighter.  Doesn’t matter what you do—as long as it’s not relaxing and it’s not sleep.  Then, tomorrow morning, attempt your regular daily grind. 

    Granted, I haven’t tried this protocol, and it’s probably not foolproof, but it should approximate the exhaustion, muscle pain, weakness, nausea, dizziness, sore throat, sore sinuses, and difficulty concentrating that many CFS sufferers cope with just about every day.  You may or may not get the hyper-sensitivity, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, and abdominal pain.  And you probably won’t experience the low-grade fever, restless sleep, insomnia, metallic taste, chest pain, back pain, depression, or hair loss, but really, we wouldn’t want to overdo it.

    Actually, please don’t even consider doing the above.  I haven’t the slightest desire for you to feel the way that I have felt so often over the past 16 years.  I just want you to know that CFS is out there.  It’s real, and it affects people in soul-crushing ways. 

    Come to think of it, it’s a bit odd that we aren’t more aware of invisible illnesses because everyone has had a bad day.  Everyone has had times when some kind of pain—physical, emotional, or spiritual has torn at their guts and they still had to go through the motions of daily life.  Still had to take care of their kids.  Go to work.  Give a presentation.  Present a cohesive picture of wellness to the world at large.  And all the while, their insides are being shredded by whatever ails them.  The truth is, you can understand my pain without actually feeling all of it.  You’ve had a terrible headache.  You’ve had stomach flu.  You were in the depths of despair when your cat died and your girlfriend stomped all over your heart.  You get it.  Really you do.  You just need to remember that you get it.

    I think the real reason that awareness weeks irritate me is that I believe that it shouldn’t be so hard to realize that our fellow humans—all of our fellow humans—have difficulties.  It really shouldn’t be so tough to understand that even though someone else’s life looks peachy keen, there’s probably something they’re struggling with. 

    As helpful as they can be in highlighting various problems, sometimes I think we should just scrap all of these individual awareness days and weeks, and just have Human Awareness Century, during which we all become truly aware of the plights of our neighbors, our friends, and the guy sitting a booth away from us at the diner.  Or, if not truly aware, at least vaguely compassionate—for no other reason than that person is human and, for all you know, may be having the day (or lifetime) from hell.

    So, I ask you, during this Invisible Illness Awareness Week not to give money, not to hold a bake sale, not even to tell all your friends about invisible illnesses, but simply to extend a single ray of lovingkindness to everyone with whom you come into contact.  You don’t have to like them or their actions.  You don’t have to smile at them or be overly nice.  Just think a single word in their direction and move on.  Just think: compassion.

For more on Invisible Illness Awareness Week go here: http://invisibleillnessweek.com/

For the master of lovingkindness go here: http://www.jackkornfield.org/

    As I walk toward the airplane, I feel my anxiety begin to prickle.  I have flown twice without incident since my brother’s death, but I find that this latest trip has awakened my fear.  I wonder if this flight might also be a doomed one.  I am less concerned for myself than for my mother.  I cannot stomach the idea of her losing another child, let alone to these flighty, airborne things. 

    My heart still wrenches as I think back to a month earlier when we sat awaiting my sister’s arrival at another airport.  I remember the young man in his late twenties striding through the gate, to be greeted by overjoyed parents.  It seemed as though the mother had to see and touch nearly every square inch of her son—hugging him repeatedly and plucking off his cap to examine his hair.  She tended to him as if to a newborn, making certain that her child is the perfect little bundle she had hoped for—ten fingers, ten toes. 

    I remember watching my mother watch this other mother do what she could never again do, and I am determined to remain alive if only for her sake.  She will tell me later that as she left me at the security gate, waiting to board an American Airlines flight, she had to stop herself from telling the security guard to make sure the plane was terrorist-free.  “One of your planes killed my son,” she wanted to rail, “you’d better keep my daughter safe!”

    Hearing this will again pull on my emotions, but I am reluctant to assign blame in this matter.  A great deal of energy has been invested in placing responsibility for the murder of nearly three thousand people, but the idea of knowing how and why it happened holds little comfort for me.  Although I appreciate the need for investigating security weaknesses and apprehending conspirators in order to prevent further violence, I have no desire for retribution. 

    Not long after the attacks I was interviewed for a documentary about them.  Its creator, Roz, was much impressed by my lack of anger toward the terrorists, and my unwillingness to exact vengeance.  I related to her my strange lifelong fascination with terrorists.  They have seemed to me an almost wholly helpless people, struggling to gain a sliver of control over their lives.  Even on the day, when I was rushing toward my brother’s apartment in Weehawken, NJ, I felt a great sorrow for those who felt so unheard, so alone, so frustrated, and perhaps even so hopeless that they could see their fellow human beings as unholy aliens deserving of death. 

    I told Roz how I had always wondered what it would be like to be on the receiving end of an act of violence—not that I really wanted to find out—but, I wondered if vengeance was a natural reaction for everyone.  I soon found that for me, it wasn’t.  I just wanted people to stop hurting each other.

    My apprehension lingers as I step onto the plane.  It is heightened by a sudden idea that perhaps this fear is my intuition popping up to tell me not to board.  I flash on a picture of myself plummeting in this doomed aircraft—my inner voice shaking its head at me.  “I tried to tell you,” it sighs, “but do you ever listen to me?”  I decide on a “better safe than sorry” approach and do a surreptitious gut check.  I might as well entertain my intuition if only for these few seconds.  “Do you really feel like this flight is in danger?” I ask.  The faintest of replies in the negative eases my concern.  At least now, if the plane does crash, I won’t have to suffer any self-recriminations on the way down.

    My thoughts return to my conversation with Roz.  The notion of war unsettles me, and I realize that I have never been able to stomach fighting—of any kind.  Watching West Side Story as a child, I sobbed uncontrollably when Bernardo killed Riff, and Tony, in his turn, stabbed Bernardo.  I was inconsolable for hours afterward—shaken by what humans are capable of—good and bad—and for the choices they could make and the choices that they ultimately do make. 

    All this is not to say that I don’t have my own violent impulses.  When I was driving home from my brother’s apartment on September 12, I saw a car with the word REVENGE! posted in its rear windshield.  A flood of frustration, horror, and anger sluiced through me.  It was all I could do not to ram that car from behind.  I knew my impulse was dangerously close to the driver’s own attitude, but I just wanted to pull him over and say, “Don’t you get it?  I don’t care who they are or what they’ve done to us.  I don’t want anyone else to feel what I’m feeling!  I don’t want anyone else’s brother to get blown up!”

    As the plane edges toward the runway, I go through my usual routine of debating whether or not to listen to the safety instructions.  Having flown a number of times before, I suspect I am almost as fluent in them as the flight attendant is.  Besides, embarrassing as it is to admit, it doesn’t seem very cool to listen.  Looking around at my fellow passengers, I notice that few, if any, are paying the bored looking attendant any heed, and I find myself thinking that I don’t want to look like a scared little ninny who has never flown before.  In light of my recent anxiety however, I decide to pay a casual attention.

    My mind wanders again though as I imagine how the passengers of those flights must have felt.  They sat much as we do, unconcernedly reading their magazines, tranquilly chatting with seatmates.  As yet unaware of the fear that would overtake them once they were airborne—once the men with the blades and mace had taken over. 

    And as the plane taxis leisurely, I imagine what those men must have felt.  Did their hearts beat so loudly they thought everyone must hear?  Did they feel a sense of satisfaction at the chaos and violence they would inflict?  Did they have second thoughts?  Did they wonder—ever so briefly—about the families of the people they soon meant to kill?

    And how did they feel just before impact when the incontrollable self-survival instincts flooded their bodies with adrenaline one last time.  Did they rush into those buildings with a sense of serenity, a knowledge of fulfillment, of completion?  Or did they experience the regret of one who might have made a different choice if only given the chance?  Or did the natural terror of impending violent death consume them just a fragment before the flames did?

    As the airplane begins to soar, banking toward the side I am sitting, I look out at the setting sun and think of my brother.  Peter was fascinated by planes and aviation.  He had taken several flying lessons in the years before his death, and had just soloed for the first time in the summer of 2001.  I thought of how he would like the view of the city from the air.  I thought of how on clear, sunny days he would look up into the sky, and, regardless of what I was talking about, respond, “Today would be a great day for flying.”

    I reflect again on the people who killed my brother.  I also contemplate the real and valid anger my countrymen feel toward them that I cannot seem to summon.  I know that everything is not okay, and I agree that people have a righteous desire, and maybe even an entitlement, to protect their families, but I cannot help fearing their potential actions as much as I do another attack.  I fear the anger that might allow a lack of understanding to slip into hatred.  And it’s not always the same people doing the hating, or the same people being hated.  Some Americans call the terrorists evil.  Other Americans put the president who declared war on them into the same class.  I cannot resign either party to that realm.  I have come to believe that there is value in every human being, a lesson each could teach me—if I decided I wanted to learn.  I believe that the Divine lives in all of us.  By this logic, I cannot hate my earthly cohabitants without hating my God—and although I’ll admit things have been rough, I’m not quite ready to go down that road.

    I may not be able to understand terrorists, and they may be baffled and even contemptuous of me, but surely, surely there must be something that could bridge the gap between our disparate lives—if only for an instant.  And in that instant, could we not spark a glimmer of mutual understanding?  A tiny granule of appreciation for the other’s life—regardless of ideology, geography, or deeds?  And could not that particle be a seed that might grow into something recognizable?  We are all humans after all.  We cannot be that terribly different.  I am certain many of them held commonalities with my brother—had sisters and mothers they loved, and dreams they hoped to fulfill. 

    I do grasp the harsh reality, however, that had I seen one of those men on that day, it is likely that no interchange between us would have altered the course of events.  If I understand nothing else, I understand pain—and the pain that these men suffered, from real or imagined causes, was most likely, too great to find a different outcome.

    As the plane begins its descent through the clouds, I watch the movements of the wings.  On commercial flights my brother used to deliberately ask for a seat overlooking the wing.  He loved to watch them manipulate the air, triumphing over gravity, and then finally yielding to it when it was time to land.  I watch the night beyond the wing, the glittering lights below, knowing that my flight will not end in a building, but on the properly prepared runway waiting beneath us.  I will walk off this plane into a seemingly unending life with seemingly unending challenges.  Yet I realize the folly in this way of thinking.  One thing my brother’s death has brought home for me is that my life is a blink of an eye, a breath, a whisper.  My only refuge is in living respectfully and audaciously—to follow in his footsteps and maybe even surpass him.

    I told my father after the attacks, after I had witnessed the kindness friends and strangers alike were glad to extend to those of us who were hurting the most, that perhaps this horrible thing had to have happened to remind us of our mortality and our humanity.  I reasoned that perhaps God had arranged Peter’s involvement because our family was strong enough to withstand the pain.  He was aghast at the idea, but my heart was so warmed by the incredible benevolence my fellow humans were willing to offer, that I hoped that September 11 would be an awakening of human compassion—one that might finally endure—a call to hearts, rather than a call to arms.

    Now, just a few years later, I see my hopes deteriorating.  I see a return to our former indifference to one another, added to solely, by a newfound fear.  I wonder if I am naïve to believe that everything can and will be okay and that fighting is not the answer.  The only alternative I can come up with seems, on paper, silly and rather innocent.  Am I ridiculous to think that the best thing I can do is stand firm and send love all the way around?  Not that it’s easy, mind you.  Not that I even want to.  Hating seems to take a lot less effort, and the idea of evil is so much more concrete and gratifying than allowing the existence, let alone prosperity, of those I disagree with. 

    And there seem to be so many now—lists of people, whose agenda I once shared, finding little ticks next to their names because they don’t reinforce my opinions, from politics to baseball, from literature to behavior choices.  It doesn’t take much for me to discount even a stranger.  I don’t like the way he dresses.  I don’t approve of the way she acts.  There are so many I am tempted to brand as untouchable that I am rapidly finding myself alone. 

    So I pray for a loosening of my judgmental nature.  I pray for the ability not to have to understand.  I pray for a love that won’t conquer all, but instead sneaks around in the night, kissing my enemies and wishing them sweet dreams.

    Just before we land, I look at the wing again.  I do not understand the Bernoulli’s effect that makes this all possible, but I know my brother would delight in explaining it to me—point by exhaustive point.  I think wryly, “I’m glad I don’t have to sit through that.”  But I smile at the notion.  I reach out into the night, sending the smile and a message, “I love you, Pete,” I sigh softly.  From somewhere beyond the clouds, unbidden, the answer returns, “I love you, too.”

Pete flying over Manhattan in July 2001 (taken by Mathew Pelto)

    But as I began reading Burn This Book, a collection of essays written in support of PEN—the world’s oldest literary and human rights organization—by the likes of Updike, Morrison, and Rushdie, I felt my spirit pick up its head like a bird who, after sleeping for a great age, senses something in the air that makes it want to fly. 

    Like most people who have enjoyed any lifelong privilege, I hadn’t given too much consideration to the idea that reading and writing are human rights—ones that are still too frequently curtailed.  But as I contemplate it now, I can’t imagine not being allowed to read.  I can never remember a time when I was banned from reading anything.  My childhood home was crammed with books and, to the best of my knowledge, I had access to them all.  I never had any notion that books could be dangerous or in any way evil.  They might be poorly written, possess errant storylines, foul language, discouraging errata, explicit sex—but they were just words on paper; they couldn’t hurt you.  I don’t know at what age I found out about the banning of books, or when I first saw movie footage of poor, little, innocent books being burned.  But I do remember that the former occurrence baffled me and the latter made me physically ill. 

    It’s not just the great enjoyments I’ve gotten from books or the large, mind-altering things I’ve learned from them that inspires me so much.  It’s the little ones too—the fact that even the tiniest morsel of the written word can have a lasting impact.  It thrills me to realize that subtle aspects of books I read as a child still remain poignant to me—and not just the classics, all of them.  I remember the lovely variances of the many cultures on display in Around the World Fairy Tales retold by Vratislav Sťovíček.  The opening sentences of “Springtime à la Carte” from The Complete Works of O. Henry, still make me smile and encourage my fearlessness and irreverence.  I have no idea why, but, even now, I think of the four girls in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women acting out Pilgrim’s Progress, making up bundles, beginning their trek in the cellar, and journeying to the attic.  The primer in cellular biology I received from Madeleine L’Engle in A Wind in the Door has never left my side.  The President’s Daughter by Ellen Emerson White provided me with a lasting education of what it means to run for office and opened my imagination to the notion of a female president (still waiting . . .).  The Sweet Valley High books created by Francine Pascal informed me about the Sing it Yourself Messiah and eyebrow-plucking.  The Iceberg Hermit by Arthur Roth taught me that alcohol makes you warm.  The Night of the Whale by Jerry Spinelli showed me the terrible sorrow of beached whales.  Barthe DeClements’ and Christopher Greimes’ book Double Trouble gave me my first look at astral bodies and auras.  The King of the Dollhouse by Patricia Clapp taught me how to dust properly.  Biographies of Lafayette and Robert Perry informed of me of what mottoes were in general and what these men’s were in particular (“Why not?” and “I shall find a way or make one”, respectively).  And all this before I had entered middle school.

    Now, when I hear about the high rate of illiteracy among women in Afghanistan and other places—when I think of all that I have been given access to and all that they have been denied, I get choked up.  And a few months ago, when Iranians were again told to shut up and accept their newly “elected” president, when their safeties were threatened for writing anything to oppose him or the legitimacy of his election—either on posters or the internet. . . I felt a sorrow and helplessness I can’t adequately describe.

    I can’t imagine not being able to write.  Actually, I take that back—I too have been the victim of censorship—my own.  There used to be things I thought I couldn’t write about.  And there were things that I would write about, but refused to share with others.  No good, I thought, could come from my voicing certain beliefs, relating certain tales.  They could only hurt.  I was wholly interested in being responsible—not seeing that responsibility may take a different form in the hands of an artist.  According to Salman Rushdie “A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, to start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.”  But it could be argued (and it often has been by me) that writers use this type of rationale to write whatever they want, for whatever selfish reason they want, and get away with it.  I have been loathe to fall into this category and, as a result, have bent over backward to be fair, to question my motives, to consider the feelings of others—even though my mother frequently tells me “that’s not your job”.

    “A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.”  When a statement like this comes out of Toni Morrison’s mouth, it sounds completely reasonable and wholly accurate.  I don’t care whether you loved or hated Beloved; we needed her to write that book.  But when I take Ms. Morrison’s quote to heart and apply it to myself, I run into a little trouble.  Are these words I write truly necessary?  How about these?  Again, such quotes may lead us into self-indulgence and over permissiveness: “The world needs to hear my opinion about everything from emotional abuse to M&Ms to flatulence, so I will write it all down and consequences be damned!”  And yet, when I think of people not being allowed to write and not being allowed to read, I start to feel that even the most inane jabbering on Facebook becomes a glorious thing.  Is it right to announce someone’s wrongdoings to the world?  I don’t know.  But sometimes, it is definitely necessary.

    So as it turns out, I am not a “sit quietly and take the world as it is” kind of gal.  (Really, my red hair should have been a clue right off the bat.)  I am nice and loving and kind.  But I am also opinionated and intelligent, and I refuse to yield to any fear that tells me not to use my brain, my voice, or my pen, because doing so would be to disgrace those who have given their very selves for my right to read and write; it would be to unforgivably dishonor those people who, even now, are fighting with their mighty pens to be heard.

For more information about PEN go here: http://pen.org/

For a closer look at Burn This Book go here: http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061774003

    When I was a kid, I had no problem, whatsoever, killing spiders.  I remember my older sister calling me into the bathroom to deal with them.  “Diana, there’s a spider in here,” her edgy voice would relate.  And I would take pride in my fearlessness, as crushed the life out of one more unsuspecting arachnid. 

    As I neared adolescence, I lost my taste for being the brave hero who rescues the damsel and kills the dragon.  I began to wonder: Just what had the dragon done to deserve such treatment anyway?  So, instead of continuing my role as the death squad, whenever I happened on any manner of insect or arachnid, I patiently caught it and escorted it outside. 

    At some point, this time consuming work became impractical, and I then adopted the tactic of simply letting them alone.  I have nothing against spiders.  They don’t scare me or freak me out.  In fact, they are something of a patron for those of us engaged in the needle arts—no crazy quilt is complete without a spider embroidered on it for luck.  On the other hand, I don’t particularly like the live ones crawling on or toward me, so I made a deal with them: they’d stay out of my immediate space, and I wouldn’t go out of my way to molest them in theirs. 

      I had generalized my spider policy to all creepy crawlers (with the exception of ticks, who let’s face it really are out to get us), so that when the ants came and tried to take over our kitchen, I tried not to notice.  I let my mother conduct, first benign and then more aggressive, attempts at coercing their departure.  I looked the other way when she started washing them down the drain.  I tried not to imagine their tiny screams as they circled through endless pipes to an undoubtedly ignominious end.  I let my mom be the bad guy who, with no other options, finally sprayed the ants—ostensibly because I am extremely sensitive to nasty chemicals like bug spray, but I knew I was indulging in avoidance.  I could no longer maintain a spotless conscience.  I was just as guilty of genocide as she.  “I was just following orders” or “I had no idea what was going on” were not going to play at the arthropod Hague.  But had these indeed been war crimes?  There had been no malice behind any of my mother’s actions.  She told me wistfully, “I explained to the ants that they had to leave, and if they didn’t, I would have to kill them.”

    The ignorance is bliss strategy blown to hell, I now have a choice to make as I trundle through the house with my trusty vacuum: to suck or not to suck.  If I don’t think about it, I’m fine: “La, la, la, just cleaning the house.  Not hurting anyone, just clearing the house of dirt.  Hm, hm, hm.” 

    But, all of a sudden, my cavalier attitude becomes a liability.  “How dare you?” some voice within me that sounds a heck of a lot like Yahweh (the big, scary God from the Old Testament).  “How dare you, not only kill God’s creatures, but also act as if you don’t even care?” 

    The voice knows he’s got me just where he wants me.  I look at the next web.  “There’s no spider there,” I think.  “I won’t kill the spider; I’ll just clear the web.” 

    But the voice is cunning, “Oh, so it’s okay to destroy homes as long as you don’t take lives?  Do you have any idea how long it took to make that masterpiece?” 

    I really don’t.  It could have taken only a matter of minutes—but then what are human minutes to a spider?  Oh, dear. 

    “Hey, Hurricane Diana, how much do humans like it when their homes are demolished in a ‘natural disaster’?  Jeeze, your sister lives in New Orleans!  You could have a little bit more sensitivity.” 

    I gulp hard at this.  I consider the very large number of spiders that inhabit our house.  Taking each one of them outside as I find them is going to be akin to a full time job.  I sigh.  “Okay, this one, I will put outside,” I think.

    “Only this one???” the voice questions heartlessly.

    “Oh, shut up!” I tell it, as I gently clasp the spider in my hand. 

    This bit is tricky.  Experience has taught me that spiders in these situations don’t necessarily clue in to the notion that you’re trying to save their lives and, therefore, make the venture as difficult for you as arachnid-ly possible.  They run away from you.  They scamper up your arm.  They parachute off your hand.  And before you know it, you can’t even see the little sucker—which, in hind-sight, was probably the spider’s plan all along.  At least, when this happens, I can make a tenuous peace with my inner conflict: “Well, I tried,” I tell myself resignedly.

   Recently, when I finally did get an uncooperative spider outside, I contemplated what this might mean for him/her.  Had I now separated him from his entire family?  Would she never again see her children?  All of this became moot as I deposited the spider on the back step, and it . . . immediately ran back toward the house.

    Maybe this is a game they play.  “Let’s see how neurotic we can make the human!  Hee, hee, hee.”  If it is, I hope they’re having fun, because I am most definitely not.  And I have to admit to you, here and now, that although I am a tree-hugging dirt worshiper, more often than not, I kill the spiders.  I suck them up with the vacuum cleaner, which is probably not the most humane way of killing anything, but there it is.

    Some days ago, I read a wonderful poem called Fireflies by Cecilia Woloch in which she cops to “not being Buddhist enough to let insects live in my house”—so, apparently, I am not alone in my dilemma.  I am, thankfully, not a Buddhist—otherwise, knowing me, my cognitive dissonance might get really out of hand in these situations. 

    I once met a Buddhist who would not let her cat kill mice because she felt it would hurt the kitty’s chances of trading up in her next reincarnation.  I identify two possible fallacies in this line of reasoning: one, being a cat can be pretty sweet if you live with the right people, how do we know that feline-hood isn’t just a step away from nirvana? And two, it seems cruel and disrespectful to deny a cat her true nature. 

    On the other hand, I can see the opposing argument: don’t well-meaning humans have to struggle to deny their true natures every day?  Aren’t we required to in order to rise above the deep-seeded instincts that tell us to defend ourselves and our territories any cost?  Or are our true true natures purer and high-minded than that?  Or is, perhaps, my true nature a combination of aspects—the base, earthbound one and the spiritual, airworthy one?  And, most importantly, which one of these should be dealing with the gosh darn spiders?

    I don’t know what the “right” answer to this is, but I settle for a little bit of both.  I do kill spiders because I think that, in general, my home is happier and healthier without them.  And, although it seems meaningless and very probably is, I apologize each time my vacuum’s hose finds a new web.  Perhaps there is something better waiting for them.  Perhaps, we, as humans, kill spiders so that we may learn again and again that destruction is a necessary part of life.  Perhaps, by becoming the compassionate, mindful destroyer, we learn more about the true nature of God.

If you’d like to read Fireflies in its entirety, you can find it here: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/08/02

If you’d like to know more about the author of this lovely poem, go here: http://www.ceciliawoloch.com/