Eat well

To say that a work of art is good,
but incomprehensible to the majority of men,
is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good
but that most people can't eat it.

Leo Tolstoy

True, Mr. Tolstoy. Or, I should say, I believe that too. Art and food are so much alike that the metaphor can play and play and not be tired for a long time.

Both require training of the tastes, for instance. Perhaps we are accustomed to that which neither satisfies nor delights. Lots of so-called "art" is like mass-produced and pre-packaged food, and it really is objectively icky. ("Icky" is a highly specialized art critique term.) But most foods, and most art (and most people, and most anything else that is alive in some way) will appeal more to some folks than to others. Good art is not universally loved - but it ought to be universally comprehensible.

I've thought about this a lot over the past few months. We've a son who prides himself on his avant garde tastes ... but it's more than that. He not only believes he has found something of good value, but he also believes he has found something of great power and beauty and artistic merit in the largest sense of the concepts. And so I have listened when commanded to, and honestly, I think I can almost taste what he tastes in the weird and eccentric dishes he has served me. I haven't developed a taste for it myself, but I do get it. I understand it. It's in the escargot and smoked alligator sausage variety (or, actually, reindeer steaks - at least one of those bands is Nordic), but I do understand it. Sorta.

Yak, anyone? Or drone metal fused with something I don't know the name of to make a sound that has obvious roots in chant but probably irreparably harms the vocal apparatus of the "singer?"

Last weekend in class, another piece was added to this mental jigsaw I've been working on for awhile. As an introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, our instructor gave us two poems to discuss and analyze. (He's very good at this, by the way. Few in the room had done that sort of work, but he was both specific enough and open enough to get the whole room going on some fairly in-depth work. It was a lot of fun!)

After we'd spent some time with our poems, he asked each group what they'd come up with, and he responded to the answers. And then he made the gloriously gorgeous point that good literature is large enough to sustain many interpretations, viewpoints, and perspectives; bad literature clubs the reader over the head with one correct and intended interpretation only. An old-fashioned flash bulb popped in my head, and a section of this topic of art, food, literature, and life was illuminated suddenly and completely for me.

Good art, good literature, good food, and a good life --- they're all alive. And live things are not seen only one way. A fundamentalist of any stripe will tell you "this is the right way" and "this is the right view" -- but art, words, foods, and life aren't like that. Not really. There is a right way and there are many right views for living things.

And that does not mean there is no wrong or bad way. That's what I used to think. I used to believe that it was my job to find The Right Way and The Truth about a thing, and I thought that to not find it was to be wrong - to be in error. There was a piece of life - and living things - that I could not see. Yes, there are wrong ways. That part is in the picture. It's wrong to beat your wife and kids (or to bully them in any other less obvious way), but there are a zillion zillion ways to love them. Lots of right ways to be the head of the home. Lots of right ways to live a life or raise kids or make lasagna or music or poetry. Lots of right ways doesn't mean there's no wrong way.

Golly, I love being in school. I really do.

And here's one of the poems we discussed --- what do you see here? Human development? Education? Useless musings? There is no single right thing. From Odes to Common Things, originally written in Spanish by Pablo Neruda, this is "Ode to the Dictionary."

Broad ox back, ponderous
beast of burden, heavy book
systematized:
when I was young
I had no idea you existed, so wrapped up was I
in my own perfection:
I thought I was quite an item.
Puffed up like a moody bullfrog,
I pronounced: "I get
my words
straight
from rumbling Sinai.
I shall distill
their pure shapes by alchemy,
for I have magic powers."

The great Magus said nothing.

Ancient and weighty, in its worn
leather coat,
the Dictionary
held its tongue, refused to reveal its secrets.

But one day,
after I had consulted it
and cast it aside,
after I had
declared it
a useless, outworn thing,
after it had done long months
of duty as my easy chair
and pillow, without complaining,
it couldn't take it any longer: it rose up
in my doorway,
growing fast, rustling it's pages
and its nests,
rustling its high branches.
It became a tree--
an authentic,
nourishing
apple tree, crab apple or orchard apple,
and words
quivered brightly in its inexhaustible canopy of leaves,
words opaque and musical,
fertile in the foliage of language,
laden with truth and sound.

I turn to
one of
your
pages:
Stodgy
Stolen
it's great
to form these syllables
out of air.
Farther down the page, there's
Storage,
a hollow word, waiting for olive oil or ambrosia.
And nearby there's
Stoop Stout Stove
Stork and Storm:
words
that slide like slippery grapes
or explode when exposed to light
like blind seeds once confined
to vocabulary's cellars,
now come back to life, communicating life again.
Once again the heart burns them up.

Dictionary, you are not
a grave, a tomb, or a coffin,
neither sepulcher nor mausoleum:
you are preservation,
hidden fire,
field of rubies,
vital continuity
of essence,
language's granary.
And it is a beautiful thing
to pluck from your columns
the precise, the noble
word,
or the harsh,
forgotten
saying,
Spain's offspring
hardened like the blade of a plow,
secure in this role
of outmoded tool,
preserved
in its precise beauty
and its medallion-toughness.
Also that other word,
the one that slipped
between the lines
but popped suddenly,
deliciously into the mouth, smooth as an almond
or tender as a fig.

Dictionary, guide just one
of your thousand hands, just one
of your thousand emeralds
to my mouth,
to the point of my pen,
to my inkwell
at the right moment,
give me but a
single
drop
of your virgin springs,
a single grain
from
your
generous granaries.
When I most need it,
grant me
a single trill
from your dense, musical
jungle depths, or a bee's
extravagance,
a fallen fragment
of your ancient wood
perfumed
by endless seasons of jasmine,
a single
syllable,
shutter or note,
a single seed:
I am made of earth and my song is made of words.

Bump, Stop, Yield

Well, apparently there is a benefit of aging. I did not know this could happen, but it is happening, so, logically, it can, eh? (Hm. "Eh?" I must be becoming a Canadian after my recent frustration with the medical world in the USA.)

The benefit of aging is that the frustrations and vicissitudes (I love that word), the various setbacks and challenges, the "changes and chances of this mortal life" are speed bumps I still have to drive over sometimes, but either my suspension is better than it used to be or I'm a better driver or the bumps wear down over time. Maybe it's a combination of all three things. Maybe after awhile we realize that we can be calm when a bump is coming because we'll be able to be okay as we go over and when we get to the other side we'll still be driving. Whatever it is, today I have and can see that I have:

1. Control over my own medical decisions (somehow, waiting until Friday and taking care of it myself feels right - I feel safe - I'm okay) I stopped at the sign, but now I'm going again.

2. An ankle bone. That has a lot to do with the feeling of being okay. I can see one of my ankle bones again, and my really nasty bruising is turning green and yellow. Now it's not just a joke foot, it's a joke Halloween foot. It's lovely, I assure you. (If someone made a painting out of the exact colors of my foot right now, people would view it and feel a bit ill and not know why.)

3. School assignments. I talked to my instructor yesterday, and now I have everything I need so that I can get on with my study while my multi-hued foot is propped up.

4. Gainful employment. This injury came at a really bad time. I've got hours and hours scheduled at the library this month, and there are training days for the rest of the staff and there are staff members out of town, and so they'll even take me all lame and weak and feeble. (phew!) I hated losing out on the hours, and I really squirmed at saying "no" after I'd already said "yes" and I do love the people I work with. They're so nice to me.

Yesterday I felt like a helpless child again. I really did. The bullying adults were implacable. I could not get answers or help or even simple understanding from anyone. Asking questions that do not have answers already on the forms ... well, it's not done, that's all. It's just not done. (The insurance phone girl's perfunctory, "I understand your frustration," was one of the most aggravating social lies I've heard in a long time.)

But today I don't care anymore. I'm a grownup again, and I'll choose my next few moves because grownups get to do that. I'll also vote for ANY CHANGE to the current insurance and medical office system because ANY CHANGE is at least getting the thing to move or crack or wobble a bit, and ANY CHANGE makes it possible to make more changes.

By the way, do you know the one thing law makers aren't willing to do? The one thing that would probably make all the difference we need to make for a long time with our system? They aren't willing to insist that all insurance companies be run as non-profits. That one change alone would make such a huge difference, we'd hardly recognize ourselves. T. R. Reid is probably right. We probably will need to have a one state at a time example set before anything big will happen, but if we made the insurance companies non-profit, made it necessary for them to cover everyone, we'd have nearly solved all our payment/fee/escalating costs problem. We really would.

I'm a better driver now than I was in my youth. Speed bumps don't panic me (or, not for long anyway), stops can be accomplished and the journey resumed, decisions can be made at crossroads, and narrow bridges can be traversed. I can even find my way out of dead ends if I happen to turn down one.

On our first date, my husband turned down a dead end, and as he made the circle in the street and started back out again, he said, "I've always wanted to know what was down this street." The thing is ... it was not just a joke to cover one of several awkward moments in that marvelous day. Even when he didn't know a street existed before he finds himself on it, he does want to know what's down there. Not all who wander are lost - but it is okay to get lost sometimes. I'm finally becoming a good enough driver not to panic about it. I've always wanted to know what was down this street.

But I don't think so

It might be possible for me to be more angry at and frustrated with the "health" care system in this country right now, but I don't think so.

We do not have a system that cares for health. We have a system that cares for bottom lines, bureaucratic form-filling, and number crunching. The right hand not only doesn't know what the left hand is doing, it has more arms than anyone knows and they're all oblivious of the others.

We have a system that makes me afraid to go to the doctor when I have either broken or sprained my ankle - I don't know which I've done, because I have yet to get an appointment with a doctor. I now have an appointment for Friday, which is one week after the injury. I did not go to the emergency room because I was not dying, and I did not (and do not) think the thing's broken, but I have no way of knowing that until it's been x-rayed. And so why don't I just go get it x-rayed? Or, there are a lot of reasons for that. Here's a partial list.

1. Emergency room visits are expensive. The co-pay is $125, which I happened not to have in my pocket last Friday.

2. Emergency room visits for non-life-threatening injuries are time consuming in the extreme (not that this is much different from any other form of waiting room in any other form of medical office functioning within the AMA)

3. I was not home when it happened - making a logistics problem as well as an insurance tangle.

4. You can't just go get it x-rayed unless a doctor writes orders for it. So, the choice is wait for an appointment and get orders, or go to the emergency room. I chose to wait.

5. There is no way to know how much out of pocket money I might spend on this project, and we are already paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars in unanticipated medical expenses for a test the doctor ordered and the "insurance" approved - but no one could tell us how much that would cost either.

Yes, yes, we asked. Insurance has to approve. Great. So ... did they? No one bothered to call to let us know that either. Yes. They approved. Great. So I had the test. And? And I got a bill from the other side of the country, from a doctor I'd never heard of. I thought it was a scam! But no, that's where the guy who reads the test has his billing done. And that was a separate bill. The hospital got a chunk as well. The doctor doesn't make the appointment, the doctor's receptionist doesn't "even know how much they charge over there," and the people at the hospital will do whatever the doctor ordered, and the insurance doesn't know how much the hospital, doctor, or test reader will charge ... but whatever it ends up being, I have to pay the bill.

No other industry does business this way -- or, not legally, at least. Just imagine taking your car to the shop. "It doesn't work right," you say. "Okay," the guy says. "I'll do whatever I think needs to be done, and you'll pay 30% of that. That be okay with you?" Oh, sure. You'd agree to that, right? He has no way to tell you what the bill might be. But you have to agree to pay a third of it.

I've just spent the morning on the phone, trying to figure out how to handle the fact that my ankle was injured in a fall. As usual,

1. I have to be approved for the expense for the insurance to pay anything.
2. I called the insurance people. How much do I have to pay?
3. It depends on what the doctor orders. You pay a third of whatever the doctor orders. How much might that be? There's no way of knowing that.

If my ankle weren't the reason my right foot is currently the size of a joke foot, I would now take a very brisk walk to work off some of this steam. I hate dealing with medical people and insurance people - especially when all they can tell me is that they don't know anything at all about what someone else might decide or what those decisions might cost me.

The "system" (which is really just a wadded-up and for-profit mess made of every system there is, including the one where people go without care - you know... like in Bangladesh or the wilds of Africa?) is a system that does not work for me. We are employed. We have insurance. And I'm scared to go to the doctor. So - our system? Maybe it could be more broken - but I don't think so.

Gone

Just like that.
Poof.

A small, rapid knock on the bedroom door.
"You awake?"

Muffled answer. Awake. Sure. Of course we're awake. Why wouldn't we be awake at three o'clock in the morning? Isn't everyone? (groan) "Yeah."

"Good! We gotta go!" (Oh lord. She's so awake. Ugh.) I don't know if she went to bed at all or if she was too keyed up and just used the time to pack.

Someone in my life - I don't remember who it was - used to say to me, "You're such a soldier." The person meant that I seemed brave. That I was stalwart in spite of difficulties. I may have been. I don't remember. Our daughter is. Our daughter is a soldier.

But she wasn't being brave this morning. (I was.) You have to perceive a problem for bravery to be needed. She was just being her own self. Ready to go. Packed. Only, this is a new self, too. The kind of keyed up she was when she left here - ten minutes ago - in the dark - before dawn - it wasn't nervous or jittery. (I am, a bit.) Her nervous, jittery energy - a kind of anxiety, I think - it was often under her surfaces before, and now it has ebbed away from her. She has become a steady person. Calm. Way, way too awake at this hour, but calm under the energetic competence and pulsing motion. (Me too. Under my tears and occasional involuntary sob, I find calm.) Sounds too much a cliche to be true, but she's become not merely "strong;" now she's "Army strong." (I'm not.)

She rested while she was home. I might be able to rest before she comes home again, I suppose. No. I take that back. I will be able to.

This is just like when she was a baby. I couldn't fall asleep if I couldn't hear her breathing. She breathes her own life now. I've heard her. I will be able to sleep. Be safe, girl. Do good work. We miss you every day. We love you. You're such a soldier.

Cat in the window, daughter down the hall, and clouds on the mountains

What an odd little glen I've stumbled into. The path is only here for a short few steps, but it's very pretty.

I have Pandora playing on my computer (I made a station called "Carla Bruni," and I'm really happy with the results). The cat is sitting in the partly open window sniffing somewhat without intention at bugs and bees that fly by every once in awhile.

And then, from my daughter's email address, I get a message about a funny thing to look at online. But this daughter is about ten steps away from me - for today - for right now, this morning, she is in a bedroom in our house, propped up at the head of the bed with her laptop. Her brother set up the wireless connection thingy for her before he left for school. So ... me online here, her online there, and what's the most sensible way to show me a link? By sending it, of course.

Soon she'll get up and leave the house for a last day of messing about in town. This weekend she has to go back. To Afghanistan. To the army. To war.

I feel as if I am ambling along, on some sort of naturalist's walk, taking notes and drawing pictures with colored pencils in my journal ... picking and pocketing a sample or two in the hope that their dried form might be enough to remind me of their lives. And now, all of a sudden I've turned a corner, and there is this peaceful, quiet, pretty, slightly amusing place. This little place. It's quiet in here, but it's not still. The water flowing in and back out again makes its bubbling noises on the rocks. Where the path leads around the corner and out the other side of this little, hidden place, I can see the mountains and the clouds that brush past their tops. What's up ahead is terrifying and beautiful and wild and so, so much larger than I am.

Today, this morning, I stop for a moment and breathe the air of this place. On my face I feel a hint of winter, like barely audible background music or the intake of breath before speech. I stand here, and I can hear the voices of the things I love. I won't stay long. But it sure is pretty.