tamarjacobson

Story of the day:

Neil tells his story here and here.

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The complex chaos of politics … and yet it affects our lives in the most fundamental ways. It really does not matter what my opinion is or is not. It matters the actual stand I take or do not. The agony and rage of the human condition is overwhelming.

Two years ago I left Israel after visiting my family. I was terribly sad to leave them and travel across the thousands of miles back to America once again. My mother was aged, and I missed her just as soon as we bade farewell. My hand fell to my side as I stood on the shuttle bus carrying me and many others to the waiting plane, tears of sorrowful parting flowing down my cheeks. Suddenly I felt little fingers grasping hold of my hand and I looked down. A small toddler in a stroller had reached out her hand to mine and she was looking up at me anxiously. I smiled through my tears and then noticed her mother smiling back at me. She was dressed in traditional clothing with a hijab covering her head. We were flying together on the same plane to America, me, an Israeli-American atheist and she a Christian or Muslim Arab woman. We continued our short journey on the bus, Arab child and I hand in hand, her mother smiling at us both all the way.

I refuse to enter into raging, agonizing arguments on the Internet or through my blog. I would rather listen to the stories that all people tell me, all the while looking into their eyes with empathy and compassion.

This is the stand I will take.

I will work tirelessly through my actions, writings, dreams, awareness-raising, and aspirations to rid, at the very least, my mini-universe from the disease of patriarchy. For all children, nay, all of humanity are punished – all suffer – from the violence and dominance that is patriarchy.

And if along the way, as I tell my own story, my experience of my life, you feel hurt by that, I will try and understand that your survival affects how you hear me.

And I will remind myself of these things over and over again, especially when darkness rages all around.

This is the stand I will take.

Quote of the day:

Best friend, my well spring in the wilderness. George Eliot

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My dear Virginia,

How much I like getting letters from you. With what zest do they send me to meet the day. So much do I like getting them, that I keep them as the last letter to open of my morning post, like a child keeps the bit of chocolate for the end –

That’s one of the openings of a letter from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, September 2, 1925. I received a book of their letters to each other on Tuesday, and have been reading them on and off all week – into the wee hours last night. God I adore those women – the way they write, how they looked, who they were! Have loved them both forever. And am so enjoying reading their letters.

It is like with a really good movie (of course, The Hours was such a one, and of course, for me, the Virginia Woolf character).

… I get so into it that I feel I become them for awhile … or, at least, one of them … if only I was half as literary and creative as Virginia Woolf – with half her beauty and courage …

… although, I think I sometimes have the tendency to be almost as wistful and sad as she …

Quotes for today:

… from one of my favorite books, The Birth of Pleasure by Carol Gilligan:

I have been following the voice of pleasure, and it has lead me into a discussion of trauma … but it was with girls that I saw most deeply into how the ability to trust one’s experience can be systematically undermined and, at the extremes, broken as an inner compass gives way to an outer reading that is at once adaptive and misleading.

Read historically, the Garden of Eden story records the move into patriarchy; we see its hierarchy being established; God over Adam, Adam over Eve, the serpent at the bottom. It is hierarchy secured by the prohibition against knowing what you know through experience, a prohibition that creates the need for a priesthood. In the beginning, in the opening of Genesis, God is ruach – a breath, a wind, a voice, a spirit that pervades the universe. God has no image, no body, no sex, no place in the human world of male and female. Once God becomes "He," melech – king of the universe, or Father – we know we are in patriarchy.

The tale of Psyche and Cupid ends with the birth of a daughter named Pleasure. Her birth becomes a moment of epiphany when we read the myth as showing a way out of patriarchy, because a daughter holds the promise of transformation, and pleasure lies at its center. The essence of love is love, and love by its very nature is free. Freeing love means releasing it to find its own form. Like wind and water, love crosses borders and boundaries; when we fall in love, we fall into relationship and out of categories, because love is always particular. This person.

Collectively we have moved to the edge of possibility; it has become possible to envision a democracy that is not patriarchal; it is more difficult to imagine a love that is passionate without becoming tragic.

Leaving patriarchy for love or democracy sounds easy, even inviting, but it is psychically as well as politically risky; at least at first, it seems to mean giving up power and control. Hope is the most dangerous emotion; it invites us to imagine an escape from tragedy, it tempts what we have come to think of as fate. The hope of the new, the nakedness of standing without a frame heightens our awareness of vulnerability and, with it, the temptation to return at whatever cost to the known. The birth of Pleasure, like any new life, is an invitation to creativity.

Maybe love is like rain. Sometimes gentle, sometimes torrential, flooding, eroding, joyful, steady, filling the earth, collecting in underground springs. When it rains, when we love, life grows. To say there are two roads, one leading to life and one to death and therefore choose life, is to say in effect: choose love. We have a map. We know the way.

There …

… with a deep sigh, breathing in and out slowly and surely, …

… I rest my case …

Quote of the day:

One may have friends all over the world, but very few will truly know your heart. Chinese proverb

Living in Buffalo after 40 years of Africa and the Middle East, I felt as if my bones would crack and crumble from cold. Thereafter, every chance I got, everywhere I went, I would sprawl my body in sunshine to warm up the bones from within so that I could handle the minus, minus winters of Western New York year after year for seventeen of them.

And then I came to Philadelphia. And now my body and bones are quite heated up enough, thank you very much. And I wonder how I lived continuously in that Middle Eastern heat for twenty years prior to all of this U.S. of A. experience I have been having for some time now.

But, of course, you do realize that if I am talking about the weather it is so that I won’t have to address the real and deep emotional issues I am facing within my self these days. Weather is what we use to keep the conversation light, superficial, fluffy, and not about the real stuff of living. Weather is what we endlessly teach poor young children day in and day out in those oh so boring circle times. Thinking that children will get to know something about this extremely complex world around them if we interminably give them puffy, cotton balls to pin up as clouds or ask them, over and over again, "Is it rainy or sunny today, little darlings?"

Keep it light, superficial, keep it distant, pushed away from the intimacy, complexity, discomfort, messiness of real issues, biases, and emotions that mixed together make up who we are: Bundles of loving, hating and living, throbbing with sensuality, desire, regrets, disappointments, fearful, grieving, and broken hearted humans.

I don’t want to sound depressing here. I just long, nay ache, for an authentic conversation with someone about who I am … really. What my dreams and, especially, desires are.

Recently I read another one of those quotes from Oprah (I can’t help but read them – they get sent to me daily because once, in a moment of weakness, I subscribed to them, and now I can’t stop … sorry, Danny):

Attention is friendship’s currency. Invest. Devote some time to listening to your friend. No advice. No "the same thing happened to me." Just listen.

I want to be with someone who would do that listening thing for me, with me, for awhile. No, not a therapist. Sure, I miss Bob-the-therapist. But that’s not what I am talking about here. I want to give voice to a listening partner, someone who is not afraid to bear witness with me, about all those thoughts and feelings that flow through me like a tidal wave. I want to put them out there and turn them over, explore and discover what I’m all about.

Because, lately, I am owning some pretty heavy stuff – I mean, staring it down …

… or is it that am I just one hot mama?

Woo-hoo!

Did you notice?

All of a sudden I just stopped blogging. For almost a week. I did not think about it much. Early this morning I wondered if it was because I have so much to say that I say nothing at all … of substance. So many thoughts and feelings locked away in head and heart. Life partner away, and alone time is plenty. Mostly Ada and I share the silence although now and again I find myself humming as I do this or that. And yet, I am often hoarse to the point of losing my voice completely. My head and heart continue their conversation into my voice box with or without my realizing, hiding, lowering my voice with or without my knowing:

… all this violence everywhere is breaking my heart; how strange that beloved ones always seem to die in July; love, feeling it quietly to myself … peaceful, even a little wistful; I order a book of Vita Sackville West’s letters to Virginia Wolf; summer is soon to end and work begins again bringing with it fear, expectation, anticipation, am being little more careful about over-enthusiasm this time around.

Yes. Peaceful, even a little wistful – delicious feeling – pretty much sums up the summer of 2006. When I googled "on loving" I found this piece:

May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!

Quote of the day:

God bless everyone. No exceptions. Bumper sticker.

Duet with Little Richard
Music by Elton John
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin

I have sold myself through and through
I have walked in the darkness too
Felt a red sun, the living proof
Washed my hands in the honest truth

I have carried this weight time after time
I have bettered the dumb and the blind
I’ve seen dignity fail and colours run
Seen justice denied by the voice of a gun

And we walk, yes we walk
And we walk with the power every day
Never letting the light slip away

Reaching out, reaching in
Touching truth and touching skin
Never letting the light slip away
And we walk with the power every day

If my faith is a fire then burn baby burn
We’ve held fire long enough to learn
Heat beneath hope is a healing light
Kept alive by the flames of night

Walk tall in the power day after day
Never, never, never lose sight of the way
See the dawn come and the dusk hang
See the power rise from an open hand

Quote of the day:

How can we make sense of anything that is happening in the world if not through the lens of our own experience? Danny Miller

From time to time I question my blogging purpose. Sometimes I question whether I should continue blogging at all. Lately I have been wondering if I am a real and serious blogger. After all, I do not attend any blogging conferences. And I have noticed that some bloggers receive over 50 comments on their posts regularly. They must have hundreds, probably thousands, possibly tens of thousands of hits a day.

I seem to piddle along telling tales of cats with broken legs and proddings into my own psyche – how boring or meaningless is that? Surely a real blogger writes about important issues, socio-cultural news, or opines politically about the wrongs and rights of everything. Most likely I take the "lens of [my] own experience" a bit too far. After all, who am I to be telling the world (even as teeny as my world of readers is) about my stupid little life?

Would a real and serious blogger write about bringing home Molly‘s ashes today? Lighting a memorial candle next to the tidy little wooden box that contains her remains … reflecting on how small the box is when Molly seemed so large and full of life when she was alive. Wondering where or whether to bury her ashes in the near future … missing my old, furry friend each morning when I rise, each evening when I retire …

Is this how you feel about Fridays and Mondays?

Download Friday_vs_Monday.wmv

Thanks, Suri …

Quote of the day:

Beware the friend who misses your big event – book party, baby shower or engagement party. People who care for you will revel in your triumphs, not avoid them.  O, the Oprah Magazine

Recent events in my life reinforced the realization that I am truly alone. Even if surrounded by kind words and supportive gestures of friends or family, I understand that some things I can only do alone. Face down my fears, hold still with discomfort, or get in touch with inner feelings. I do best alone, unclouded with rumblings of kindly advice or people who are too uncomfortable to listen to me tell my truth. With that comes a second realization: the discovery that I am strong. I can be like the huge, sturdy oak outside my window. Standing firm as stormy waters swirl around me, even if I might feel dizzy with the confusion, chaos, unknown sensations of it all. I am awed by the power of the brain. Indeed, my mind is my strength, for it creates attitude, develops understanding, shows me reality, and brings me peace as a healing balm to all kinds of pain and discomfort.

Strength comes in knowing that I have a choice about how to feel, what to believe, how to think and, even, how to react. Therein lies my responsibility, commitment to my self, integrity, ability to give and receive love, and personal growth.

Alone and strong.

Therein lies my freedom.

Me oh my … just was tracking someone googling "Tamar photos," when I came upon this:

"Fog on the Tamar."

Hmm … well let’s just say … the fog has lifted.