tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49405974112614282512024-03-05T02:35:31.862-08:00the things she thinks about . . .there is a crack in everything . . . that’s how the light gets in – Leonard CohenDeborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-25763182374567707892011-05-23T11:53:00.001-07:002011-05-23T11:58:32.049-07:00Am I missing something?Are you missing something?<br /><br />Please visit my new <a href="http://www.deborahbatterman.com">home</a> for updated blog posts.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEeJ2p6aHzpbJ5D6DQ_UHuzB8ohgcV7NfQoRWvGtvgb_a7Qx4LatNlHrw4xfItLGd2PHCdZ_zJ0pXHLWsanUZ3WufU2WewYnxzxflqMkFYABb7l3ADVjcAoqqNHEkiptw3cNq_Nk2WX9g/s1600/shoesblurb.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEeJ2p6aHzpbJ5D6DQ_UHuzB8ohgcV7NfQoRWvGtvgb_a7Qx4LatNlHrw4xfItLGd2PHCdZ_zJ0pXHLWsanUZ3WufU2WewYnxzxflqMkFYABb7l3ADVjcAoqqNHEkiptw3cNq_Nk2WX9g/s400/shoesblurb.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609987474026665378" /></a>Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-2672141043748085392011-03-16T14:51:00.000-07:002011-03-17T06:10:39.728-07:00On the CuspIt always hits me like a gentle surprise – I’ll be taking a walk, early March, some icy patches on a road lined with gritty mounds that beg to be called something other than snow – when I hear them, those first birds of spring. Their singing stops me in my tracks.<br /><br />I stare out my kitchen window, a cup of coffee in my hand, a bird making a trampoline of a tree branch. A robin who, like all robins, can simply do no wrong. A sound – <span style="font-style:italic;">rat-tat-tat</span> – turns my attention from the red breast to the red head needling its way up the bark of a tree.<br /><br />Two days ago there was frost on the car in the morning. Yesterday a light, steady rain that continued to wash away the snow. By late afternoon the rain gives way to sun. I go out on my deck, more birds by the day it seems, chirping and cooing, heard if not seen. A goose honks, a crow caws. Any night now I’ll open the door to the delightful, mystifying sound of peepers, the anticipation still no match for the way it creeps up on me, another gentle surprise.<br /><br />Sometimes I think I live for music as much as I live for writing. Rock, classical, jazz , it all depends on my mood, where I am, who I’m with. I love making playlists for my iPod, burning them to CDs for friends. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.<br /><br />Sometimes I think it’s my love of music that gets me going to the gym, raising my heart rate to some healthy purpose. I like the Elliptical cardio machines best, a motion that feels like gliding. If someone has left on the TV monitor, I turn it off, tune out the world of news and sports and cooking shows and whatever. To anyone glancing my way I'm just another workout junkie in leggings and a tee-shirt, plugged in to my Nano. No one knows I’m dancing.<br /><br />Today the sun is shining, there’s an on-the-cusp of winter-spring chill in the air. I’m tempted to go to the gym, but after an especially cold, snowy winter that gave me even greater respect for bears, I opt for putting aside the headphones, going for walk, opening my ears to all the music I could want.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-88008298729753009172011-02-24T12:41:00.000-08:002011-02-24T13:35:15.392-08:00The Sky at My FingertipsMy husband loves to watch TV; I like sitting with him in our downstairs den, one eye on whatever section of the Sunday <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times</span> I haven’t yet combed through, the other peeking at the screen from time to time. If the article I’m reading is just too compelling, I tune out what’s on TV, especially since, graced with DVR by my daughter, I no longer have commercial time to catch up on reading. More often than not, a loss is also a gain. It took some time, breaking down his resistance to encroaching technology, the I-don’t-need-it-mindset so easily seduced and transformed into how-did-we-ever-live-without it? Movies, taped any hour of the day or night, get my full attention, unless they’re going nowhere. That’s what ‘erase’ is for.<br /><br />The other night, we’re watching a werewolf movie, not my first choice of a genre but this one has me curious, with Anthony Hopkins and Benicio del Toro, not to mention the charming Emily Blunt, as the stars. The wolfman here is a particularly vicious one, so I turn my head from the gore and mayhem following an attack. So happens that the moon, full and golden, peeks through the glass door, the real deal so much more alluring – infatuating, I might even say – than the onscreen imitation. “Look!” I say to my husband. He barely turns his head, too caught up in scripted action, though he does give a bit of a howl, a moment of synchronicity when reality becomes meshed with TV.<br /><br />I leave him to his movie, lured now by the night sky. I’m stopped by the sight of a pair of shoes at the top of the stairs. Old habits die hard. The clogs are positioned for easy access, a strategic spot between front door and back, mostly for the purpose of going outside with the dog at night. The dog is now gone, and, with her, the need to go out on cold, snowy nights, a few too many this winter. Sometimes what feels like a gain – no more trudging through frozen snow, bearing up to the bitter cold while she did her best to get a scent – is also a loss. You have to look up at the night sky to know it exists. So I go outside, my need, not hers. The moon is shimmering, hiding as much as she reveals. <br /><br />It’s the hidden things that call me now – stars shaping themselves into stories via constellations, planets with their ice and gas and mythologies – so I do what any self-respecting owner of an iPad with a fascination for the night sky would do: I download an application, Star Walk, almost as good as any telescope in bringing the sky up close, to my fingertips: Phoenix rising in the southern sky, Ursa Major to the north, Ophiucus to the west. Today the moon is in its waning gibbous phase, Venus rose at 4:29 a.m. and set at 2:03 p.m. The picture of the day is a true color image of Jupiter that zeroes in on impact sites of fragments 'D' and 'G' from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. For the moment it is enough for me to know there was comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9, nicknamed String of Pearls.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-2960835539534484802011-01-13T18:37:00.000-08:002011-01-18T11:22:00.639-08:00I write, therefore I knitThe day I released my dog from her suffering, I took up knitting again. My daughter had been wanting a scarf patterned with Griffyndor stripes since Harry Potter enchantment overtook her, and my decision to start knitting that day somehow felt life-affirming. I could not settle my thoughts enough to write about the grief, or even try to imagine the hold it would have on me. No point in that anyway. Grief demands that you be with it. The word itself carries a weight, made a little heavier by the weeks of ministration to an ailing creature. To try and push aside grief, 'get on with one's life,' misses the point. I could easily co-opt and modify words from a familiar song, Gospel in origin – s<span style="font-style:italic;">o high you can't get over it / so wide you can't get around it</span> – to give voice to my feelings. The only way is through. Be with it.<br /><br />Which brings me to knitting. I remember learning to knit as an adolescent, something to occupy me as I sat with my family at night, watching TV. Or was it a fascination of sorts, something about a single strand of wool being shaped into a sweater or a scarf? Even the simplest pattern, no fancy cables stitches, can yield something beautiful. Even the most straightforward garter or seed stitch requires an attention to detail. There is a rhythm to knitting and purling, not a far cry from a meditative settling of the breath or the quieting of the mind needed when I sit down to write.<br /><br />Is it a stretch to suggest that a story exists in a hand-made sweater? Or that the very act of knitting, steadying as it is, is akin to that state of receptivity when I leave my laptop behind, take a walk or a drive, always surprised, and delighted, at the way <span style="font-style:italic;">le mot juste</span> will make itself manifest? Putting aside the pleasure I get from knitting, or my own suspicion that it serves as some physical manifestation of the same creative impulse that drives me to write, I find myself thinking about metaphor: the Fates weave; Madame Defarge knits; I pull out some stitches, too loose to my liking, redo them. Getting it right means seeing how the parts become the whole. Finishing it off means understanding that a hand-made scarf or hat, like a story or novel, can be less than perfect and still exquisitely cohesive.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-37905422563586709972010-12-06T07:58:00.001-08:002010-12-14T15:05:57.041-08:00A Dog's DeathI listen for the sound of footsteps, the early morning signal that she's up and ready to go out. Rituals that take hold, thirteen years' worth in this case, are not so readily relinquished. If I listen long enough, I may even believe I'm hearing her.<br /><br />In a way, I am. I'm hearing her nails click against the wood floor, the jingle of her dog tags, her licking her paws, even the barking that seemed more a delayed reaction to the UPS truck in our driveway than the first alert it used to be. An aging dog is entitled to the same selective hearing as an aging person. An aging dog with advanced lymphoma is entitled to take her time, make instinctive decisions about what is really worth getting up for. Week by week her body diminished in size, and she still managed to muster the strength to go out, on her own, her dignity intact. Looking at the sun-filled square on the floor where she liked to nap brings an ache. Positioning myself in a downward-facing dog pose in the room where I do yoga brings an expectation: she will be here any minute, settle herself on the floor no more than a foot away from me. Sitting and reading on the couch in the living room, or working at my desk brings an unsettling quiet. She was not an especially noisy, or even affectionate, dog, and yet her absence fills the space she left with a profound silence. <br /><br />The death of a dog, or any pet for that matter, is a reminder that there are many faces to love. 'Puppy love' has nothing, and everything, to do with puppies. When the dog I grew up with died, my mother wanted some words she could put on the equivalent of tombstone. Not a problem, I said, then I wrote: <span style="font-style:italic;">A dog's love is heaven's reminder of forgiveness</span>. We call a dog's brand of love 'loyalty,' we call it a relationship based on training and trust and care. Some people abuse their pets, others pamper them. Then there's the rest of us, seeking the closest thing to balance between domestication and honoring the call of the wild. How much of an animal spirit can we really tame? Why would we want to?<br /><br />All that rain last night, too much of it, making my sleep fitful. I listen for her breathing (almost a snore). I almost hear her get up from her bed, go to another of her favorite spots, a mat on the other side of the bedroom, closer to me. She does that thing dogs do when they paw at a mat or towel, crumple it up, lie down. How, I wonder, could that be comfortable? And that's exactly the point, the wonder of it all. Domesticated animals accommodate us. They please us when it suits them. Yes, there's a mutuality to it all, but the bottom line is simple: a dog is a dog is a dog. Some dogs learn things very quickly, and we call them intelligent. Some dogs are very demanding in their need for a scratch on the head or a rub on the belly. All dogs beg for food, until something wreaks havoc on their bodies, not even a piece of fresh chicken appealing enough to swallow. All dogs teach as much as they learn, if we just pay attention. In the very last weeks of my dog's life, I watched her become a master at conserving energy. I did my best to read her signals, frustrated at times when what I thought was the right thing to do became the one she resisted.<br /><br /> Some dogs love to roam, others prefer to stay put and guard their turf. Some dogs welcome people when they arrive and bark when they leave. All dogs we love make us angry when they don't come running on command and break our hearts when they're ailing. Their suffering is made manifest in ours, riddled with projection, the rock and the hard place that closes in on us. There's no easy out here, only euphemisms and questions: How soon is too soon to end her suffering? Did we wait too long? Did we time it just right?Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-50411193180084437342010-11-16T17:05:00.000-08:002010-11-19T09:57:05.343-08:00FortuneThree Fortune cookies, still in their cellophane wrappers, sit in a bowl on the center island of my kitchen, remnants from last night's take-out. If I wait for the right moment, I figure, one of them will beckon: crack me open, see what I have to offer. It's not the taste of the cookie that ever really appealed to me anyway. In fact, if memory serves me well, I was put off by the thought of eating something with a piece of paper inside (though I confess to loving those strips of colorful dot candies I devoured as a child). And yet, as soon as the dinner plates are gone from the table, replaced by a small dish of cookies, often with slices of orange, I'm usually the first to grab for one.<br /><br />Today they sit, though, wafers in a game not unlike those sleight-of-hand games that require very fixed attention – which cup is the ball under now? – the mind doing its very best to keep from being tricked. A message, important to this moment, this time in my life, will reveal itself. If I just watch carefully and choose wisely.<br /><br />Let's face it, the commercial Fortune cookie is no match for a madeleine. All the same, that often soggy amalgam of flour, sugar, vanilla, and oil tempts me. Maybe it's just that I love words (especially those that hold promise), with their suggestion that anything is open for interpretation. Or that some deep-seated part of me knows that everything – let me say it again, <span style="font-style:italic;">everything</span> – matters. When my daughter was a young girl we played a game she called 'Jewelry Store.' She would lay out her trinkets, make them available, offer them up. If I chose one she was not ready to relinquish, she would shake her head, no-no-no, it's too expensive. Then came the kicker, out of the mouths of babes: <span style="font-style:italic;">you get what you get</span>. Is it a coincidence that today, just when I need some affirmation of what I'm doing with my life, I reach for the cookie with the hidden message, exposed now, telling me, "Your dearest dream is coming true"? Not that there's ever a bad message in a Fortune cookie, but the one I just happen to pick up speaks to me. A day later, feeling lucky again, I crack open the next cookie, the little smiley faces saying just what I need to hear: "You will maintain good health and enjoy life."<br /><br />Like Fortune herself, those slings and arrows throwing her this way and that, the cookie's origins can't be pinned down. Was it a Chinese immigrant in San Francisco's Chinatown who gave out cookies to the poor, filled with tidbits of Biblical inspiration? Or a Japanese immigrant slipping a thank you note into cookies given to friends who stood by him in times of hardship? Is there any truth to the legend that messages hidden in Moon Cakes were a subversive, revolutionary tactic that aided the Chinese uprising against the Mongols centuries ago?<br /><br />Astrology. Palm readings. Tarot cards. Fortune cookies. There's an undeniable impulse to know what's ahead, or at least believe that something we hope for is in the cards. Nobody wants bad news. I don't necessarily believe that everything happens for a reason. But I do believe that sometimes Fate or Fortune or Chance – all with their nuanced differences – grabs you by the neck and says, Stop. Look. Listen.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-11824230949240135302010-10-18T10:16:00.000-07:002010-10-26T19:04:53.529-07:00Let's Talk BooksIn an essay by Joan Didion (<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=CpnlIEbkpNcC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=joan+didion+%2B+why+i+write&source=bl&ots=lbQ5Ns53rg&sig=ans5qBQbR_tMV3fP6t4sfAHN9Ok&hl=en&ei=RKjFTK6SNsL88Ab0tMXOBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=joan%20didion%20%2B%20why%20i%20write&f=false">"Why I Write"</a>) that I first came across years ago, the iconic author makes the thought-provoking observation that "setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space." Writing, unless in a personal journal for the writer's eyes only, demands readership; conversely, what it is that draws readers to the written word was the subject of a recent talk by Francine Prose at <a href="http://centerforfiction.org/">The Center for Fiction</a> in New York City. The center is housed in the Mercantile Library (with which it's now affiliated), a neoclassical building on East 47th Street that is a treasure in its own right. Founded before the advent of public libraries, the New York Mercantile Library evolved into a cultural institution where the likes of Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass would lecture. In its early incarnation, members requested books via prepaid stamps. Books were delivered via horse and wagon.<br /><br />Sitting in the small library, listening to the author of <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Reading-Like-Writer-Francine-Prose/?isbn=9780060777043">Reading Like a Writer</a> (and other wonderful books) talk about <span style="font-weight:bold;">Why We Read</span> was a reminder that whatever market-driven, get-it-while-it's-hot book-acquisition habits modern times have foisted on us, there's always that one, classic or otherwise, that demands being reread. In fact, at the beginning of her talk, Prose gives an anecdote about a discussion with grad students at Southern Mississippi who asked what she was reading at the time. They looked at her dumbfounded when she answered, Dostoevsky. And yet, I imagine, after the time they spent studying with her, with the close attention she brings to passages in books that illuminate a character or sentences that shape a narrative and its tone through very deliberate word choice, they came away with some greater insight into the ways in which writers are shaped by what the read. How could it be otherwise?<br /><br />Why <span style="font-style:italic;">do</span> we read? The very act of settling oneself down in a private space, book in hand, reading closely, for the first or the fifth time, noticing something that escaped us in an earlier read is pleasure of a very certain kind — pleasure being just one of the handful of reasons we read, according to Prose; we also read for escape, for information, for connecting with another person's consciousness, for community, as in becoming part of a fictional character's world. To which I would add community, as in talking about books. How many times have I said to a friend, "You really have to read this book"? How many times have I bought a particular book with a particular friend in mind? It's no secret why book clubs have grown in geometric proportions, from living rooms to cyberspace. <br /><br />All of which is to say, that hand-in-hand with the ongoing dialogue about the death of print publishing is that other dialogue, the one premised on the very life of books, the way we live them, breathe them, talk about them. <br /><br />For every high-profile book we read about (and read), there are countless sleepers and almost as numerous online book clubs and book blogs to remind us of them. Here are a few favorites of mine: Flashlight Worthy <a href="http://www.flashlightworthybooks.com/category/book-club-recommendations-and-book-club-books/62">Book Club Recommendations</a>, <a href="http://www.bookclubgirl.com/">Book Club Girl</a>, <a href="http://americareads.blogspot.com/">Campaign for the American Reader</a> . . . <br /><br />. . . And a gorgeous passage from a favorite book:<br /><br />"The Stroms sang with a skill built into the body, a fixed trait, the soul's eye color. Husband and wife each supplied musical genes: his mathematician's feel for ratio and rhythm, her vocal artist's pitch like a homing pigeon and shading like a hummingbird's wings. Neither boy suspected it was at all odd for a nine-year-old to sight-sing as easily as he breathed. They helped the strands of sound unfold as easily as their lost first cousins might climb a tree. All a voice had to do was open and release, take its tones out for a spin down to Riverside Park, the way their father walked them sometimes on sunny weekends: up, down, sharp, flat, long, short, East Side, West Side, all around the town. Jonah and Joseph had only to look at printed chords, their note heads stacked up like tiny totem poles, to hear the intervals." — <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=kjb_x89uDvgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=richard+power+the+time+of+our+singing&source=bl&ots=mpyNwMBe4t&sig=Vk-lJeymmd1_Z9ukBv6G0JpFT3s&hl=en&ei=cEfHTK78LMH78AaIvLg2&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=richard%20power%20the%20time%20of%20our%20singing&f=false">The Time of Our Singing</a>, Richard Powers.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-51468889126449392972010-10-03T10:20:00.000-07:002010-10-10T10:18:30.061-07:00A Dog's LifeMy dog is poised on her rocky perch, staring out at I don’t know what. Alert to anything and everything, squirrels and deer high on the list of attention getters, cars and trucks (UPS and Fed Ex especially) a close second. I learn a great deal from watching her. She’s a smart dog, smart enough to turn a command– <span style="font-style:italic;">Come, Maggie! Now!</span>– into a game of ‘catch me if you can.’<br /><br />The wind spooks her, so does heavy rain, with or without thunder. She follows me around, a panting shadow. It is a bodily thing, sound and air pressure combining to unsettle her. No amount of soft words or gentle stroking reassures her. She wants to be – with me – downstairs where she can tuck herself away in the washroom, knowing I’m within easy reach, on the couch in the family room. Who, I wonder, has trained whom?<br /><br />She stands next to me, awakens me with her restless pacing and a slight whimper. It is the middle of the night, she wants to – needs to – go out. I admit it, being awakened in the middle of the night by a dog who has in all likelihood feasted on something in the yard not really meant to be eaten is not the way I pictured my life. On rare occasions (for example, years ago when a family of foxes was playing near the pile of logs in our backyard) it is the call of the wild rather than the euphemistic call of nature that makes her wake me. And yet, inconvenienced (do I daresay annoyed?) as I might be, there is a kind of silence that only comes in the deep night outside. If it’s a star-filled night, or the moon hangs high, I might even say I’m grateful to be pulled out of bed. In ministering to a dog in her senior years, annoyance gives way to compassion.<br /><br />Old dogs do not get up so quickly in the morning. That’s not all that different from old people. An older dog with lymphoma has a way of making you worry when you look at her lying on her bed, a little like a teenager, do I really have to get up? This is a far cry from the dog standing so close to my side of the bed I can feel her breath, feel her tail wagging, <span style="font-style:italic;">wake up wake up!</span> The dog who would start barking at my husband, barely finished with dinner,<span style="font-style:italic;"> let’s go out, have a catch!</span> The fact that her idea of fetching is to retrieve the ball about three times before running off with it and hiding it is irrelevant. The fact that she almost never does this anymore is something I’m just coming to grips with. It's said that humans are the only animals with a conscious awareness of what it means to die. When I watch my dog poised on her perch, looking out at anything and everything, I gain some new awareness of what it means to live.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-33957519784566775942010-09-10T12:29:00.000-07:002010-09-13T18:10:43.375-07:00Days of AweThe ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are called Y<span style="font-style:italic;">amim Noraim</span>, Days of Awe. This is not something I had any awareness of as a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, putting on holiday clothes to gather, with my friends, at the synagogue (a.k.a. <span style="font-style:italic;">schul</span>) I could see from my living room window. Going to services was something you just did, whether or not you knew the full import of why you did it. My mother didn't go (she was busy cooking), and my father went on occasion (if not religiously), always for the Yizkor service in memory of the dead on Yom Kippur. So it goes: we celebrate the new year with apples and honey, we atone for our sins, we connect with loved ones no longer with us.<br /><br />If the memory of rituals I did not understand, with all their power, is imprinted, so is the sense that my Jewish upbringing was more cultural than spiritual. Yes, all those life events − the birth of a new baby (and the rituallstic <span style="font-style:italic;">brith</span> for a boy), the bar and bat mitzvah, the weddings and funerals − were done (almost) to the letter of the law. But little by little something gave way. Dairy products and meat might never appear on the table at the same time, but the dishes used for each would be interchangeable. Maybe in the days of old there were reasons for observing the rules of <span style="font-style:italic;">kashrut</span>. But these are modern times, and modern times bring new ways of doing things. You don't have to be Jewish to know you can make an argument for anything. You don't have to be a Jewish mother to know that there are strategies more powerful than guilt to keep families together at holiday time. You don't have to be too sentimental to long for something that seems farther removed with each passing generation.<br /><br />If, as a young girl I came to see Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as days of eating and fasting, as a grown woman who loves the power of language I relish hearing that explication in the rabbi's sermon about these 'days of awe.' My curiosity takes me further, to a book by the Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon, where I read: "Because the world is judged by its majority, and the individual judged by the majority of his deeds, happy is the man who does a single good deed, for he tips the balance in his favor and that of the world. Woe is him, if he commits one transgression, for he tips the balance against himself and the world." And even within that scale of sins, some carry a heavier weight than others, the point being that 'awe,' as in reverence or even fear, is intended as a way of examining the pages of one's life between those bookend days of judgment and atonement. And then we eat.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-19005872223607702512010-08-10T07:38:00.000-07:002010-08-20T08:54:17.479-07:00How Smart Is a Smartphone?Calling a phone smart is a little like calling a cat a dog because he begs for food, though I confess to once having a cat whose eating habits made him seem more canine than feline. He would gobble up the food in his bowl, then horn in on the other cat's food, making her back off without even a hiss. With some behavior modification, the more demure (and skittish) of the pair quickly learned to eat in a less catlike manner, as in nibble/walk away/come back for more. The name of the game now was: get it while you can, and when there's no more left, learn to beg and scavenge, leftover fresh fish (duh!) a favorite. He was eighteen pounds at his most rotund, down to a healthy thirteen within months, doctor's orders, my ministrations.<br /><br />All of which begs the question: how smart really is a smartphone? Anthropomorphism may tempt us to imbue our pets with traits they may, or may not, possess, so yes, I can call my dog smart because she outsmarts me. But animals have hearts and brains; phones, call them simply cell or smart, are devices of convenience. Sometimes, like animals, they save lives, but the call-911 alert is a far cry (a learned response, I would add) from that instinct to bark or howl when the person who dubs you his or her best friend has fallen down a flight of stairs. Not that I'm not completely charmed by my new toy, the latest and greatest (putting aside what <span style="font-style:italic;">Consumer Reports</span> has to say) iPhone 4. I'm not obsessed with e-mail (really I'm not) but there's something liberating about not having to be at my laptop to access it. Twitter? I'm a newbie here, and a tweet in hand seems what the app was really designed for. Even my texting has improved with that spiffy touch-screen keyboard. My daughter is proud of me. Say good-bye to those clumsy-fingered typo-ridden texts from my antiquated cell.<br /><br />Which brings me back to my original point: 'smart' implies intelligence and/or a quick wit, maybe impertinence; a smart dresser is someone I admire; a scrape on my elbow that smarts is something I could do without. Language evolves, too, and a 'smart' device is one 'capable of independent and seemingly intelligent action.' When it comes to phones, there are technical distinctions in determining whether they can be called smart, but according to an article in <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9129647/Cell_phone_smartphone_what_s_the_difference_">Computerworld</a>, there's no clear industry standard. All the more reason to add even more criteria to the mix: Can my phone pinpoint that word that's on the tip of my tongue or find the eyeglasses my husband misplaced? Can it teach my dog that 'fetch' means bring the ball to me (not the other way around), or keep her from hyperventilating in anticipation of a thunderstorm? Can it keep me from ending up in the slowest checkout line at the supermarket or make sure, when I tune in to Pandora, that the stream of rock I get is finely enough tuned to my idea of classic?Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-49230453123488216442010-07-19T05:54:00.000-07:002010-07-21T09:49:23.668-07:00Weather WatchI'm sitting on my deck, the sky turning dark, day to night in minutes, rolling thunder in the distance. The wind kicks up, followed by a frenzy of rain, churning up memories of late-summer hurricanes, Donna a biggie in 1960 when I was growing up in Brooklyn, Bob the first time a male name was used, 1979. Resistance to male names was riddled with sexism − God knows the weather can be unpredictable, fickle, just like a woman − and took the form of a silly quip ('ever hear of a him-icane?), oddly semantic in nature. In actuality, <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/basics/naming.shtml">hurricanes</a> were first named for saints, then longitude-latitude positions, which became a little unwieldy for quick communications. It was a novel by George R. Stewart, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lQRmGkAKFakC&dq=George+R.+Stewart+%2B+Storm&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=iftFTJiULcKC8gbZ0cmZBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=George%20R.%20Stewart%20%2B%20Storm&f=false">Storm</a>, published in 1941 (and reissued in 2003) that spawned the practice of giving hurricanes female names. The fictional storm is given the name Maria, and the novel takes readers through the twelve days of her life. She lives on, too, in the Lerner and Lowe classic, "They Call the Wind Maria," inspired by the novel.<br /><br />The other day at a barbecue the talk turned to the heat spell we've been having, no end in sight, is global warming the culprit? I made the point, between sips of my margarita, that we'd had a beautiful spring. Some unusual highs and lows for the season, yes, but so many beautiful cool nights and sunny days filled with flowers that seemed especially vibrant. There was agreement, and with it some reservation. Winter, sandwiched between spring and autumn, seems endless. And summer, even with the sky still light at eight in the evening, so fleeting.<br /><br />The rain stops, I decide to go for a walk, only to be caught in an unexpected shower. Did I say 'unexpected'? Didn't I check www.weather.com, the hourly breakdown, and see that promise of sun poking through the clouds? My instinct is to pick up the pace, get home before my sneakers start squishing. A picture comes to mind, of people I once read about who run into the rain, smiling, instead of avoiding it. I ease back into a comfortable stride. How much is really necessary, or even possible, to 'know before you go'?Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-49996911189057074972010-05-09T15:31:00.000-07:002010-05-13T11:15:04.361-07:00HappinessMother's Day 2010: A long annoying beep wakes me, an alarm system's battery back-up out of whack. The power outage that began last night shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. Before going to bed I saw the sky light up. It's the kind of thing that happens when intense winds send tree limbs falling onto power lines. Is there a message here?<br /><br />My cell phone tells me I have a voicemail, Happy Mother's Day from my daughter, far away (Los Angeles). A voicemail is not quite the same as a live voice, but at the precise time she calls I'm in some cell phone dead zone, and besides, the card already arrived, a Golden Retriever puppy nestled against her mother's snout, image and words compressed into the thought, all that really counts. I think about my own mother, gone longer than I like to remember, who would probably cringe at the thought of cell phones and e-mail. Some years I miss her more than ever. Sometimes I think she died in April to remind me that renewal is not a figment of my imagination. My first Mother's Day without her was a milestone for my daughter: she rode a two wheeler for the first time. I ran alongside her, my hand on the bicycle seat. Then I let her fly. <br /><br />A headline from my Google Reader catches my eye, Huffington Post, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/08/7-simple-ways-to-be-happi_n_564737.html">7 Simple Ways to Be Happier</a>. I follow the link to the full feed, intrigued as ever by reductive approaches to a better way of being, even if I'm not buying. Maybe even more intrigued in light of the book sitting on my desk, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374161143?ie=UTF8&tag=richardpowers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0374161143">Generosity: An Enhancement</a>, the latest novel by Richard Powers in which he casts his brilliant eye on the question of genetic enhancement in general and the happiness gene in particular, at the same time exploring the blurring of fact and fiction in a technology-driven world. The '<a href="http://living.health.com/2009/10/19/simple-recipe-for-joyful-life/">happiness</a>' article tells me that women are more wired to worry than men (duh!). If the article is essentially a rehash of what many years of yoga and my own growing consciousness of mindful living continue to teach me, it's also a reminder that sometimes we need to look out before we can look in. At the same time, I resist this commodification of what strikes me as simple common sense. When my mother was dying, she wondered why it took a lifetime to just smell the roses. No meditation teacher suggesting that “simply being aware of what is happening right now, without wishing it were different” or finding yourself a "joy buddy" as ways of increasing happiness could have made the insight more profound. Do physical exercise? Sing or dance? Be still? Any prescriptive that strikes one's fancy is bound to bring some happiness, so long as it doesn't become just that, a prescriptive. Old patterns die hard; new ones take a long time, for some a lifetime, before there can be a true shift in perspective.<br /><br />A day before Mother's Day I was walking my dog and I stopped to chat with a neighbor. We talked about Mother's Day, the busy restaurants booked solid, all those fathers knowing best, all those daughters and sons doing what they believe they do so well in the interest of honoring mom. How about letting them all go out, we joked, and we stay home, two mothers sharing a quiet afternoon and a glass of wine?Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-56711719572874797662010-02-04T12:00:00.000-08:002010-02-09T08:15:40.914-08:00Every Picture Tells a Story<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQWX1ewz6hSiLiA_Ufc_m3Ujtb_EVd0ipsYtQ8U4gtdw0qO54vym8oY16TxUZrJGaNElQVrJnoHuZQ_9h36Zc042TFJxmwC76zk_l7ANAG8WBZqthwUiHE4YZ27OTKdhzzDJK1NDESDAM/s1600-h/J_Litaker.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 294px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQWX1ewz6hSiLiA_Ufc_m3Ujtb_EVd0ipsYtQ8U4gtdw0qO54vym8oY16TxUZrJGaNElQVrJnoHuZQ_9h36Zc042TFJxmwC76zk_l7ANAG8WBZqthwUiHE4YZ27OTKdhzzDJK1NDESDAM/s400/J_Litaker.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434489277286829426" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Mother and Child</span>, James Litaker<br /><br />I recently had the pleasure of participating in an art exhibition premised on the Greek notion of <a href="http://www.ltproject.com/LTP_events_Jan30.html">ekphrasis,</a>which is essentially a written representation of a piece of art, a response of sorts. Stare at a picture long enough and a story may well take shape. If not a story, then a poem maybe. Representational or abstract, a piece of art can strike an emotional chord. Memories are jarred. Images become words, which in turn become images all their own. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />No Moment Will Ever Be like This One<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">after James Litaker</span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"> Ouch!</span> says the girl, to herself. If she complains, her mother will only pull harder, hurting her more. It’s the nature of the comb, her mother will say. Something to be endured. Just for once she wishes her mother would let her go to school with her hair loose. A classroom is no place for unruly hair, her mother will say. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Already nine and hungering to be nineteen</span>, says the mother, to herself. She runs her fingers through strands of her daughter’s hair, a soft tangle that reminds her of nothing so much as the swift passage of time. The more impatient her daughter seems, the more the mother is inclined to slow down, teach her a lesson about beauty, the kind that comes with precision, the rhythmic comb and weave, comb and weave of a perfect braid. Now she stops, just to savor the moment. To the girl this feels like punishment, maybe even torture, a braid that gets longer with each twist. To the mother it is a kind of release, a morning ritual that gets her through the day, each and every one the same, with its hopes for her daughter, maybe a teacher or a secretary or a beautician; anything but standing behind the counter of a delicatessen, dishing out macaroni salad or ladling soup into a container, slapping slices of turkey or ham onto bread slathered with mayonnaise or mustard, sometimes both. She feels like a surgeon, cutting through the bread. There is nothing so unnatural as making sandwiches through a filter of latex. <br /> <br /> She picks up the pace again, comb and weave, comb and weave. Pictures her daughter at nineteen, braids gone, hair cascading to her shoulders.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-27364441141924061612009-12-14T09:48:00.000-08:002009-12-20T12:40:08.370-08:00A Day (almost) like Any OtherLast night I went outside with my dog. The light under the deck was shining on me in a way that cast a shadow against a tree on the slope of our hill. It made me look twelve-feet tall. <br /><br />Two days ago I turned sixty. I tried to make it a day like any other, a typical Saturday beginning with a Pilates class. There is a core of women I've grown fond of at the gym. We do Pilates together. We talk about our grown children (and grandchildren). Today, though, we talked about what it means to be sixty. Don't go gray, said one of them. It sucks the color from your face. What are you doing to celebrate? asked another. No party, I said. Some close friends and family would gather at my home. We would make a meal together, drink some wine. <br /><br />I thought I was clever in marking other decades, with big parties at twenty-nine, thirty-nine, forty-nine. When fifty-nine rolled around, I could not muster the 'dance-the-night-away spirit.' The years pass quickly enough; sixty would be here in the wink of an eye. Try as I might to talk myself into not making too much of it, there is something about turning sixty (without trying to color it as the new forty) that begs honoring, if not out-and-out celebration. <br /><br />A week before the big day I was riding a wave of buoyancy. Years of doing yoga have given me a particular frame of reference for understanding that everything comes, in its time. I am nothing if not a warrior, but even warriors know that effort needs to give way to grace. There is lightness (do I daresay light?) in some of my poses. If this is what it means to be sixty, I'll take it. Another wave sends me crashing down, into the grip of an unsettling deflation: the dentist finds a red spot on my gum (nothing suspicious but let's have a look in a week); the dermatologist says not to worry about the keratosis (but we'll have to treat it); the gynecologist does her best to reassure me that Vagifem is safe (but for how long?).<br /><br />In one of <a href="http://www.mindfulnesscds.com/author.html">Jon Kabat-Zinn's</a> meditation tapes, he uses the lake as symbol for a deep resource of clarity. There may be turbulence on the surface, but with mindfulness and attention, it is possible to access the clarity beneath. In my own moments of clarity, I can see those swings of buoyancy and deflation as nothing more than part of a whole. Some days are simply better than others. Some years, markers that they are of past and future, loss and gain, are as bitter as they are sweet.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Optimism</span><br />by <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3176">Jane Hirschfield</a><br /><br />More and more I have come to admire resilience.<br />Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam<br />returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous<br />tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,<br />it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.<br />But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,<br />mitochondria, figs – all this resinous, unretractable earth.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-71940246007596989362009-11-05T12:31:00.000-08:002009-11-09T12:13:23.747-08:00I know It's Only Rock 'n' Roll . . .In the Canary Islands, descendants of an aboriginal people called the Guanches communicate via an ancient whistling language. As <a href="http://dianeackerman.com/">Diane Ackerman</a> eloquently tells it in <span style="font-weight:bold;">A Natural History of the Senses</span>, "They trill and warble a little like quails and other birds, but more elaborately, and, from as far away as nine miles they hear one another and converse as their ancestors did." She writes, too, about the aboriginals in Australia who have to travel across a maze of invisible roads, or Songlines. And she posits a simple yet profound question: what evolutionary advantage does music afford?<br /><br />Two weeks ago I sat sixth row center at a benefit concert for the <a href="http://www.playingforchange.com/">Playing for Change </a>foundation. I had seen the video of street musicians from around the world performing the same song – <span style="font-style:italic;">Stand by Me</span> – and I was thrilled at the chance to see at least some of them perform live at Town Hall in New York. Music is nothing if not a uniting force. But it's one thing to produce and edit snippets of musical performances from diverse parts of the world (some punctuated with videos of Bono, Keb' Mo, and Bob Marley), another thing altogether to unite the musicians (minus the star power) for a concert. Granda Elliott, who hails from New Orleans, is an unqualified national treasure. Clarence Bekker (Amsterdam) has an infectious charm, not to mention a powerful voice brought to harmonizing subtlety when he sang with Titi Tsira (Guguletu, South Africa) and Mermans Kenkosenki (Matadi, Congo). If the performance was less than polished, more like a jam session, utter joy pervaded. The musicians danced, they sang, they played guitar and percussion and harmonica. They smiled. They wore shoes that looked spanking new.<br /><br />One week ago I was lucky enough to have landed two tickets to night #2 of the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Benefit Concert</span> at Madison Square Garden. I was not so up close and personal, but it doesn't matter all that much at the Garden. The monitors provide all the close-ups you need, and besides, it's mostly about sound in this cavernous arena. The lights dim, out comes Tom Hanks, more to remind us of why we're there than to tell us about who we're going to hear. Not that introductions are needed. Jerry Lee Lewis makes his way to the front of the stage, piano at the ready, <span style="font-style:italic;">Great Balls of Fire</span>. It's the only song he plays, and it's all he needs to. Aretha follows, all diva in red and pearls. She brings Annie Lennox onstage to join her for <span style="font-style:italic;">Chain of Fools</span>, followed by Lenny Kravitz in a duet of <span style="font-style:italic;">Think</span>.<br /><br />It gets even better.<br /><br />Between sets the screens roll in a photo montage, a continuum of images taking us back to the roots of rock and through its evolutionary shifts. The audience is abuzz. Who's playing next? Who's filling in for Eric Clapton, forced to bow out because of gallstone surgery? Is Mick Jagger really going to duet with Bono? Some extreme Clapton fans are rumored to want their money back. Too bad for them if they insisted. Jeff Beck, who would have been a surprise guest playing with Clapton, filled in with his phenomenal group, including <a href="http://www.talwilkenfeld.com/">Tal Wilkenfeld,</a> the dynamic twenty-three-year-old Australian bass player who happens to be female. So even if the reality of hearing/seeing Clapton and U2 on the same night, on the same stage was what lured me to the second night of the concert, for my money – and from the standpoint of pure music – Jeff Beck's set would turn out to be my favorite, electrifying in every sense of the word. Sting joining him for a rendition of <span style="font-style:italic;">People Get Ready</span>. Buddy Guy belting out <span style="font-style:italic;">Let Me Love You</span> to a background of dueling guitars. Jeff Beck sending megawatt vibrations to the highest reaches of the Garden, accompanied by Billy Gibbons, playing <span style="font-style:italic;">Foxy Lady</span>.<br /><br />It gets even better.<br /><br />You don't have to be a fan of heavy metal music to appreciate Metallica. Especially after seeing the documentary <span style="font-style:italic;">Anvil! The Story of Anvil</span>, which underscores the passion that gives rise to any type of music. More especially after hearing Metallica play <span style="font-style:italic;">Sweet Jane</span> with Lou Reed, and <span style="font-style:italic;">Iron Man</span> with Ozzie Osbourne, and, in what may have been one of the most inspired pairings of the night, <span style="font-style:italic;">You Really Got Me</span> with Ray Davies of the Kinks.<br /><br />Did I say it gets even better?<br /><br />U2 opens their set with <span style="font-style:italic;">Vertigo</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Magnificent</span> and a great deal of anticipation about surprise guests (Mick Jagger? Sir Paul McCartney?). Knowing that Bruce Springsteen headlined the first night, and knowing how much he loves playing to his fans, I harbor a secret feeling (wish?) that he might show up the second night. When he walks onto the stage, escorted by Patti Smith, and they launch into <span style="font-style:italic;">Because the Night</span>, with Bono, the power of rock 'n' roll reaches a fevered pitch. Patti leaves the stage, Bruce stays, for a riveting <span style="font-style:italic;">I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For</span>, with Roy Bittan and U2. The party keeps heating up, with Black Eyed Peas bringing a hip hop edge to <span style="font-style:italic;">Mysterious Ways.</span> Once Black Eyed Peas (minus Fergie) leave the stage and she coos those first haunting notes of <span style="font-style:italic;">Gimme Shelter</span>, the final guest of the night, who is really no surprise at all, struts onto the stage.<br /><br />The show comes to an end, I leave the Garden, walking on air. Singing to myself. Thinking, it doesn't get much better.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-3331524803781302662009-08-19T08:31:00.000-07:002009-08-24T12:38:22.830-07:00Lazy Hazy DaysMidsummer night: I stand outside on my deck, stare up at the moon through the trees, follow the music. To the left I tune into the percussive cicadas, to the right a chorus of tree frogs, in-between the rhythmic whistle of crickets. We call them 'lazy, hazy days,' but summer always seems so fleeting, as if time truly does speed up. Was it always that way? Or does adulthood bring a shift in perspective, a different way of sensing time? Ray Kurzweil's <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0277.html">Law of Time and Chaos</a> suggests that our perception of time is measured in 'milestone' events. In the world of childhood, there are so many of these events and intervals between them shorter; hence, there's an ever-present sense of being 'in the moment,' when time does seem to move more slowly. The older we get, the fewer the milestone events and the greater the intervals between them, which contributes to the perception of time speeding up.<br /><br />Fleeting as summertime may feel, it is also a very full season, thick with leaves and flowers, the air redolent with memories of summers past: the joys of sun and sand and floating on a wave; the craving for peaches and fresh corn and watermelon; the trips to and from the library, arms filled with books, every one of which will be devoured in this season of leisure. Even decades later, when years are no longer measured in semesters, summer reading still takes its place as something distinct from the rest of the year. There are summers when all I want is to get through past issues of <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/">The New Yorker</a> and those gems of literary journals that have piled up. Other summers demand nothing more than temptation-rich breezy novels. Still others bring a longing to revisit something rich, <span style="font-style:italic;">Anna Karenina</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">The Odyssey</span>. Today I think I'll read some Mary Oliver poems, tomorrow who knows what? <br /><br />Moments come and go, lost in thoughtlessness or stuck in a wheel of perseveration. To persevere is to see ahead, value the effort as much as the light (even lightness) that eventually comes; to perseverate is to be caught up in a moment that has passed. Persevere has a softness, an open-ended breathiness; perseverate is the linguistic equivalent of anxiety.<br /><br />Midsummer day: the blue heron who makes visitations to a pond on my road stops me in my tracks. She is grace in stillness, poetry in motion. She does not persevere, she does not perseverate. Her field of awareness must include me, even at a distance, but she is singular in her purpose right now, the epitome of patience, a master of timing. The longer I watch, the more commanding is her presence. With swiftness and skill, she plucks a small fish from the pond and swallows it. And with a wingspan that carries with it all things mythical and prehistoric, she takes flight.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Mary Oliver</span><br /><br />So heavy<br />is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,<br />always it is a surprise<br />when her smoke-colored wings<br /><br />open<br />and she turns<br />from the thick water,<br />from the black sticks<br /><br />of the summer pond,<br />and slowly<br />rises into the air<br />and is gone.<br /><br />Then, not for the first or the last time,<br />I take the deep breath<br />of happiness, and I think<br />how unlikely it is<br /><br />that death is a hole in the ground,<br />how improbable<br />that ascension is not possible,<br />though everything seems so inert, so nailed<br /><br />back into itself–<br />the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,<br />the turtle,<br />the fallen gate.<br /><br />And especially it is wonderful<br />that the summers are long<br />and the ponds so dark and so many,<br />and therefore it isn't a miracle<br /><br />but the common thing,<br />this decision,<br />this trailing of the long legs in the water,<br />this opening up of the heavy body<br /><br />into a new life: see how the sudden<br />gray-blue sheets of her wings<br />strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing<br />takes her in.<br /><br />From <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Do-We-Know-Poems/dp/0306812061#reader">What Do We Know</a> (DaCapo Press, 2002)Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-17181871969006803762009-06-08T17:02:00.000-07:002009-06-09T06:43:24.840-07:00A Piece of Paradise<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCEMHNCSEQjTmaOCwnhWUDshl7ix1DVOpKCpzOsJI6tAMJEK2_XYWqLKM-urkrCV2m-N-mlC7koCnSWuOGmSTjt2y-PKw3W5zB5Tx42D57JYDbUwCpBU7z1k9sTlm8rWBhG7I0-a7fFwA/s1600-h/DSCN1395.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCEMHNCSEQjTmaOCwnhWUDshl7ix1DVOpKCpzOsJI6tAMJEK2_XYWqLKM-urkrCV2m-N-mlC7koCnSWuOGmSTjt2y-PKw3W5zB5Tx42D57JYDbUwCpBU7z1k9sTlm8rWBhG7I0-a7fFwA/s320/DSCN1395.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345113595775640914" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFZU6JO0ig3aQVXs8EhY5oM-91eSlsogpJeo80wolNlH0rPHE7Bu7etxOpAqS6ncKc6RS1FPBvKw8oET3bWzdRyVtvM72uRiXoE4mo1Sk4iec-PgzRSdWpy6KvFBmJUVNvvmoZmeJSjZA/s1600-h/DSCN1404.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFZU6JO0ig3aQVXs8EhY5oM-91eSlsogpJeo80wolNlH0rPHE7Bu7etxOpAqS6ncKc6RS1FPBvKw8oET3bWzdRyVtvM72uRiXoE4mo1Sk4iec-PgzRSdWpy6KvFBmJUVNvvmoZmeJSjZA/s320/DSCN1404.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345112678035406978" /></a><br /><br />Sometimes I wonder if it was the image that came first, not the word. The link between the two is intrinsic, a chicken-and-egg conundrum that rests more on riddle than solution. Both have the power to conjure; one is worth a thousand of the other. <br /><br />Sometimes words are not enough, or they're too much. It's a deeply philosophical notion to try to grasp the 'beingness' of something. Cliches too often get in the way.<br /><br />Sometimes a cliche is a point of entry. I lie in a hammock overlooking a vineyard, Moon Mountain, Sonoma. There are hawks circling the sky, birds darting from tree to tree, a lizard sizing me up. My husband is in the swimming pool, ours alone. I think about trips to Napa Valley over the years, the lush rolling hills, the air filled with lilies, the winery tours and tastings that make Napa/Sonoma a tourist mecca. To call the landscape intoxicating is to push a cliche to its limit. Yet there's no other word that captures it all so perfectly. It is a word that trips off the tongue, stumbles across syllables. Makes you linger. <br /><br />Sometimes words slip away, the spirit rises, the image both contained and illuminated now, nothing separating It from me.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-77720845396435462592009-05-18T12:23:00.000-07:002009-06-01T17:44:44.188-07:00Grace NotesIn Leonard Cohen's <span style="font-weight:bold;">Book of Longing</span>, the most recent of his collections, there's a poem, "<a href="http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/">My Guitar,</a>" that takes its shape as a drawing, one of many that stand alone or as illustrations paired with poems:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">My guitar is so beautiful<br />Sometimes I wish I could play it</span><br /><br />The humility is pure, the phrasing quintessential Leonard Cohen. He is the troubadour of charm, the master of melancholy, the poet that gave rise to at least a fantasy or two of mine when I was young, impressionable, and under the spell of anyone who could show me the way to spin words and/or music into poems and songs. I spent many nights filled with empathy (maybe even envy) for Suzanne, or hoping I just might encounter some of my own sisters of mercy. That's not to say it was all so personal. He's a talented (and, yes, handsome) man. I have a great appreciation for what he does, and I had the supreme pleasure of seeing him perform last weekend at Radio City Music Hall. <br /><br />When I heard him perform fifteen years ago, he was fifty-nine, the age I am now. At seventy-four he is the embodiment of grace. Fans may still cheer when he sings out those ironic, if not self-effacing, lines from <span style="font-style:italic;">Tower of Song</span>:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I was born like this, I had no choice<br />I was born with the gift of a golden voice</span><br /><br />But there's a different tone to the trope now, an overriding poignancy. To watch Leonard Cohen move with a certain age-appropriate stiffness onstage, to hear his voice, deeper and richer, filled with its own goldenness, is to be in the grip of someone who has faced the darkness and come back a little lighter. Someone for whom ecstasy can be the chords of song, a broken Hallelujah, the touch of a woman, three back-up singers cooing <span style="font-style:italic;">day-do-dum-dum-dum</span>. Someone who captures love and loss and longing with the all-encompassing spirit of a Buddhist and the simple heart of a man.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-9897493152749996292009-04-02T15:33:00.000-07:002009-04-15T05:57:57.513-07:00Land of Dance<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV-1zR7fp2ugZxZdXbJcggn3qraPBlczJzicZqqi-T79OAiZjMiuTtb3CK1UTEauAvsYNthkuyD_o9hsiepM2xOyoJoy2TTF0w1c9xUg_IXyDZcGr7gSBR87zORemShcI5fj4bWElw1RU/s1600-h/DB+at+DWTS.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV-1zR7fp2ugZxZdXbJcggn3qraPBlczJzicZqqi-T79OAiZjMiuTtb3CK1UTEauAvsYNthkuyD_o9hsiepM2xOyoJoy2TTF0w1c9xUg_IXyDZcGr7gSBR87zORemShcI5fj4bWElw1RU/s320/DB+at+DWTS.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324901503489140818" /></a><br />I love to dance; my husband has a bum ankle. So I played the ‘do-it-for-us' card and signed up for a series of ballroom dancing classes at our local Fred Astaire studio. Loosen the hips, loosen the ankle — right? Besides, I figure, even the best of marriages can be spiced up with a little tango.<br /> <br />Our instructor is a lovely, young Russian woman who speaks broken English. She begins with the basics, a simple fox trot promenade that requires positioning one of my husband's hands in the small of my back, the other extended, straight as an arrow, clasped with mine. She puts on music, directs us around the ballroom, tells us, “This is how you do land of dance." It takes me some time to realize she means 'line of dance.' Either way there's a charm to the syntax, and whatever is lost in translation is gained in metaphor. I want a one-way ticket to the land of dance.<br /><br />Once, many years ago, I was at a club in L.A. A man invited me to dance with him. Ask me his name or what he looked like, I draw a blank. Ask me instead what it felt like to be spun around, light as meringue, never losing a step, never a thought to the next one. Some moments remain imprinted in the body.<br /><br />Dancing with a partner is largely about chemistry; somebody has to lead, somebody has to be led. Sometimes the give and take of making love becomes a dance. A great basketball game is a choreography worthy of Twyla Tharp or Daniel Ezralow. So, as the eighth season of DANCING WITH THE STARS picks up momentum, it's easy to see why the hunky Gilles Marini and his partner Cheryl Burke continue to win the praises of the judges, not to mention the cheers of the fans. He's a natural, and their chemistry is strong (simmering, as judge Bruno might say). There's a vicarious thrill to watching them, all the more vicarious when you're sitting in the audience four rows back from the stage. Lucky me (the envy of many of friend) to have a daughter who works on the show. The demand for tickets is high, and there's an online wait list. I would never be here otherwise.<br /><br />The atmosphere at a taping is pure party, lights flashing, cocktail attire required. Security is tight, and the no-cell-phones rule strictly adhered to (they’re checked at the door, for retrieval after show). An air of expectancy greets you as you enter the ballroom, a feeling akin to being at a wedding (waiting for the bride and groom to make their dramatic entrance down the grand curved staircase) or a bar mitzvah celebration (watching dance motivators usher in the little man of the hour). There’s a behind-the-scenes emcee (not to be confused with host Tom Bergeron) who gets the party started by singling out colorfully dressed audience members (it doesn’t get more colorful than the man in the elvish green suit) and inviting volunteers to take the stage in a pre-show warm-up dance (hard as it is, I promise my daughter I'll stay in my seat). Finally the countdown begins, the audience cheers and applauds as Carrie Ann, Len, and Bruno make their way to the judges’ table. Tom and Samantha take their place, the parade of dancers and stars begins. If I’m smiling (maybe even laughing), it’s with the sense that I’m no random prime-time observer at one of the most popular shows on television. I’m here (up close if not all that personal), taking in the grace and the stumbles without the cameraman’s angles guiding my focus. Even if seems oh-so-orchestrated (it is a show, after all), there’s no room for cynicism in this bubbly ballroom; if there’s a wolf at the door huffing and puffing his reminder that the world outside is falling apart at the seams, he doesn’t stand a chance: the only thing that can bring down this recession-proof dome is a searing tango or the springiest of lindy hops. During commercial breaks we’re engaged and entertained, a captive (if not captivated) group indeed. Some light banter, a couple of DWTS tee-shirts up for grabs. My eye catches a very pregnant woman being escorted out. I like to imagine the story she’ll tell her child, a newborn dancing into the world. The camera pans, we’re prompted to stand up, reminded that loud cheering is welcome; and if we don't agree with a judge's score, that's just what booing is for.<br /><br />Not that this audience needs any prodding. Fans of the show have waited long enough for tickets. Friends and family of the stars know just what they're there for. Celeb spotting? That's par for the course. This is L.A. after all. They're everywhere.<br /><br />But for tonight at least, the celebs we're most interested in are the ones on the dance floor, 'stars' putting themselves on the line, trying to invigorate their careers, or just have a little fun, show another side of themselves. Every day is different, every week is different. One week LT shows a newfound light-footedness in his samba, the next week he dances a leaden tango. The Woz may get low scores from the judges but the fans text and clamor, bring him back. Even Carrie Ann and Len and Bruno can't help but give some credit for effort. Until the bar is raised, the competition narrows. Time for him to go. <br /><br />In a way, there's something oxymoronic about dance competitions. The essence of dance is a social activity, the music that drives it a primal, communal force – an observation that underscores one particular finding of the <a href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/348/25/2508">Einstein Aging Study</a>. The study, undertaken to determine the relationship between leisure activities (both cognitive and physical) and the risk of dementia in the elderly concluded that the only physical activity associated with a lower risk of dementia is (surprise!) dancing. <br /> <br />Do I need some expert to remind me that dancing is good for the heart (not to mention the soul)? No. Do I need a partner (real or imagined) to sweep me around the land of dance? Yes. And if his ankle gives or he indicates (in any number of ways), yeah, it was swell but he hates missing <span style="font-weight:bold;">Law and Order</span> reruns, I give him a reassuring nod. Not a problem The gym I go to is now offering Zumba classes. Nothing like a sizzling salsa to get the blood flowing, make my heart soar.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-8228211785309290382009-03-11T12:42:00.000-07:002009-03-18T21:25:59.087-07:00Breaking the ChainA friend of mine forwards an e-mail to me, <span style="font-weight:bold;">Subject: Keep her going – hilarious!</span> I quickly scroll through the body of the e-mail, a series of photos that would bring a smile to any woman's face: a mouse with a lid that flips up to reveal a compact mirror, make-up included; a hammer in the shape of a shoe, part of a tool set that includes a screwdriver that could double as a knife; a toilet seat chained down. All the way at the bottom is an animated woman walking the world for breast cancer.<br /><br />Someone else forwards an e-mail, <span style="font-weight:bold;">Passing the Purple Hat</span>, in celebration of Women's History Month and in memory of Erma Bombeck. An 'angel' has been sent my way. She brings me classic Erma Bombeck reminders about casting off the petty things that keep me from living my life to the fullest. She asks me to pass the purple hat along to women I love. Good things will happen if I do.<br /><br />I consider forwarding the missive along with the caveat: I don't usually do this (which, by implication means that sometimes I do.) It would be a simple act of good will; take a quick look through my contacts, choose some names, hit send. Instead I find myself hesitating, thinking back to the days when chain letters had to be copied verbatim, no simple hitting of a button to send them along. Copying words makes you think about them, just a little more. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Chainmail</span>, an early form of armor made from small links of steel or iron, was designed to keep a sword from penetrating. Originally known as <span style="font-style:italic;">chain maille</span> (French, derived from the Latin <span style="font-style:italic;">macula</span>, "mesh of a net"), the soldier wearing it might still suffer from the force of a blow, but he would not be cut. The development of plate armor diminished the need for chainmail.<br /><br /> From a linguistic standpoint, the <span style="font-style:italic;">maille</span> that gave rise to armor and today gives us the modern variant in the form of jewelry and handbags, is no more than a cousin to <span style="font-style:italic;">mail,</span> derived from the middle Dutch word for traveling bag (i.e., the kind used by mail carriers). But in a fast-paced communication mode that forces us to read between the consonants, I can opt to slow down, make the metaphoric leap between the mesh of a net and the mail circulating around the world with electronic speed. And instead of hitting the forward button, I might (with only a modicum of guilt at breaking the chain) share a poem by <a href="http://www.boaeditions.org/bookstore/details.php?prodId=180">Dorianne Laux</a>:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Enough Music</span><br />Sometimes, when we're on a long drive,<br />and we've talked enough and listened<br />to enough music and stopped twice,<br />once to eat, once to see the view,<br />we fall into this rhythm of silence.<br />It swings back and forth between us<br />like a rope over a lake.<br />Maybe it's what we don't say<br />that saves us.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-44184488038940976282009-03-02T09:14:00.000-08:002009-03-04T12:31:13.968-08:00Limited SunEverything is nuance. The postage-stamp-size weather preview on the front page of the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> informs me that today there will be limited sunshine. I look out my window. The sun, hidden by cloud cover, casts a milky glow onto the fresh snow. Any hour now (3 p.m., according to www.weather.com), the clouds will break, the sun will peek through, maybe even start melting the snow. In Greek mythology Helios is responsible for giving us sunlight. In Norse mythology it is Sunna, in Shinto lore she is Amaterasu. Only in a world governed more by the exactitude of science than the metaphorical framework of mythology could sunlight be trumped by language.<br /><br />If sunshine every really becomes limited, can I stop wearing sunblock? Would I even want to? Or would the grim reality of a sun deficient or constrained in some way afflict me with a variation of SAD (solar affective disorder), or worse, a full-blown depression. Everything is nuance, <span style="font-style: italic;">le mot juste</span>. Partly sunny (which, by implication, means partly cloudy) suggests a trope of a totally different hue. There is a softness to the phrase, a perception of possibility; even a little sun is better than a limited one.<br /><br />Which brings me to the heart of the matter, a reflection on the nature of language (in general) and writing (in particular). More than one wise person has said, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." And one particularly brilliant writer (Joan Didion) many years ago wrote an essay that addresses, with Didion-esque insight, the question of "Why I Write. " The essay appeared in <a href="http://www.writeronherwork.com/excerpt1.html">The Writer on Her Work</a>, edited by Janet Sternburg. Didion admits to stealing the title from <a href="http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/write.html">George Orwell</a>: "One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a sound, and the sound they share is this:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I</span><br />In many ways writing is the act of saying <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span>, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying <span style="font-style: italic;">listen to me, see it my way, change your mind</span>. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions – with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating – but there's no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space."<br /><br />Even if there is some overstatement in equating writer with bully, the "three short unambiguous words" that set the essay in motion strike a deep, resonant note. And Didion's bully, being a 'secret' one, insinuates herself into my consciousness, even years after first reading the essay. Why, after all, do I write? In a world apparently filled now with more writers than readers, where do I find my place in this growing band of bullies? I could answer very simply, three words of my own: I just do. And if that isn't enough, I can remind myself how I love the puzzle of piecing words together, the cadences of sentences and paragraphs, the images demanding that I take note.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4940597411261428251.post-70952450420512034012009-02-06T05:35:00.000-08:002009-02-24T09:30:49.888-08:00HoveringI had a dream the other night, a helicopter down on its side, no passengers visible, though there was a sense that I was witnessing a rescue effort, some scrambling about. The images from recalled dreams leave an imprint, and this one tempts me to tease it apart. Maybe it's a fascination with the ease at which a helicopter goes right up that brought the image to my unconscious. Maybe my dreamscape transformed the recent Hudson River airplane landing and rescue into a helicopter scenario. Or an image from a novel-in-progress haunted me. (The protagonist sees a a newspaper photo of a plane crash, the one that killed Stevie Ray Vaughan).<br /><br />The wonder of helicopters is the way they hover. It's a notion I keep with me in certain yoga postures. It's an image that made me laugh the first time I came across it in reference to being a parent these days. I don't think I've been a 'helicopter parent' in the way I understand it (though my daughter might beg to differ). But these days, in which my daughter, drawn by the lure of the film industry out west, struggles through the rite-of-passage known as getting that first job, I feel a certain unease that has me hovering, if not crashing.<br /><br />Early morning, a phrase pops into my head, <span style="font-style: italic;">hanging in the balance.</span> If 'hovering' implies lightness, the tissue-thin wings of a butterfly, 'hanging in the balance' brings its own weight to uncertainty. One day there are interviews, lots of anticipation, so much promise; the next day no postings, no phone calls. So much hangs in the balance. It's enough to bring a mother to tears, not just for the obvious (I'm a mother, nurturing is what I do); if there is a certain mirroring to the mother-daughter relationship, being a mother who also happens to be a writer brings even more poignancy to my daughter's efforts. For her it's creative cover letters and resumes, somebody <span style="font-style: italic;">ple-e-a-s-e</span> hire me (i.e., I'm enthusiastic, hard-working, detail-oriented). For me it's creative cover letters and the telling detail of well-honed story, somebody <span style="font-style: italic;">ple-e-a-s-e</span> take note. The cycle of putting oneself out, being rejected (or downright ignored), complaining, crying, taking a few deep breaths, rolling up the sleeves, putting oneself again, is oh-too-familiar. Even in the best of economic times, very little comes without effort.<br /><br />One image gives rise to another: I see my daughter on one side of a mountain, myself on the other. Hovering above, between us, is the realm of all things possible. For her it is all about the climb, everything on the rise; for me, even if there is sense of slipping down, there is also an acute awareness that what is behind me sets in motion what lies ahead.Deborah Battermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08323806344051047240noreply@blogger.com2