I don't have a title for this post

If you'll forgive the possibly distasteful metaphor, I feel as if I'm in an iron lung. I need air and movement. The interminable construction site that is my street and the surrounding area fills the air with whine and hum and hammering -- perhaps also a metaphor for my own complaining, So here's some gratitude: the only part of my garden that isn't dead and brown is the path leading to the side yard where we keep the garbage cans, and that little sliver is just gorgeous. Here's a photo, no filter:

Here's a close-up of the purple flowers on the left:

And that's bougainvillea that is squeezing through on the upper right -- no one planted it, but it's determined to flower there. I noticed yesterday as I drove through Beverly Hills that they'd finally stopped watering the median on Burton Way. It's a wide expanse of green flanked by some ultra fancy hotels and shops, and I always found it irritating to see sun-illuminated sprinklers watering at any time of the day. I guess the fancy folk have decided to join the hoi polloi and endure dead grass in the name of conservation. Hallelujah. I sure wish it'd rain. I wonder when the rain dances begin -- didn't Governor Rick Perry of Texas declare a state-wide Pray for Rain day? I'm in if it works, although I'd prefer some kind of dance, too.

What are you reading? I'm reading a very interesting and good novel by the English author Elizabeth Taylor. The book is called Angel, and is not just beautifully written but weird in just the right way. One of the friends I visited in Chicago the other weekend, probably one of the most well-read people I know, recommended it. I hadn't ever heard of that Elizabeth Taylor, and while this friend doesn't know me all that well, he apparently knows me well enough to have suggested something that I really, really like.

Evidently, I need air, movement and inspiration because this post is going nowhere. The only thing I can possibly say for it is that life here at a moon, worn as if it had been a shell is an ongoing conversation. I'd love to hear your thoughts. What are you reading? What are you listening to? Is it raining where you live? Every time you hear the word ISIS, do you think of on the fifth day of May, like I do?

Gratitude, dropping

When I carried a bag out to the garbage cans in the street tonight, I stopped and listened for a moment to the rain dropping. We so rarely hear that phrase -- rain dropping -- not technically a phrase but different than the noun raindrop. The rain has been dropping for a few hours, slowly and gently, pattering on the metal awning on my back door. I am filled with calm.

I have no idea why I am filled with calm. There has been no effort on my part. Today was partly unbloggable, not because it was bad but because it contained private things that I won't discuss here. There is a lot going on, and I feel a bit like the Cat in the Hat who not only can balance ridiculous things while standing on a ball, but also maintains a kind of sense of the absurdity of doing what he's doing. He is goofy in his confidence.

I began the morning feeling nauseous as I scanned Facebook and saw a thread on one of my old high school classmates' page that discussed the election results. There was talk of doom and destruction, of arming oneself. Those who voted for Obama were called idiots. Evidently, we have no idea what's coming. Debacles of the financial sort. A different America. Debacles of the social sort. Let's move to Texas, one said. There was a photo of a young daughter with a semi-automatic rifle in her hands, its ugly, black force a grotesque contrast to her young beauty. She was out, I guess, for a jolly day of hunting or learning how to shoot, she and her father, exercising their right to bear arms. Raising her up right, said one of my classmates. Way to go! another one said. Girls and guns! with a smile emoticon next to it, said another. Better stock up on ammunition, said another. I don't think I need to say that these are all very successful, well-to-do people who went to an exclusive private prep school in Atlanta, Georgia. Or maybe I need to point that out.

A friend of mine encouraged me tonight that I'm doing a good job, balancing on that ball with all that shit in my hands. I told her that I had a heroin habit and put a smiley emoticon next to it.

I know many people use November to express gratitude. Gratitude schmatitude is what I've thought for the last month, obstreperous, refusing the tyranny of the zeitgeist. A woman with a hairdo and small ballet shoes with kitten heels and a simple lined notepad let me talk today about Oliver. She leaned over a balcony as I walked away and said cheerily, Tell him that help is on the way! Don't despair! I could suddenly hold my troubles more securely. Tipping, I got my balance.

As I drove down Wilshire Blvd. to pick up the boys from school, I was filled with gratitude. With no effort on my part, I was calm.

Le Silence

Le Silence, Odilon Redon

Le Silence is the title of the above painting by the French artist Odilon Redon. I won't ever forget the moment I saw it, nearly thirty years ago, somewhere along the coast of France in a museum with a retrospective of his paintings. I'd never heard of Redon and still don't know much about him, but that painting made me stop and stare and has always resonated with me.

Well, I'm not going to be silent about this -- this question I've had all morning -- this thought:

A man was executed last night in the state of Texas for murder. His clemency appeal had been denied by the Supreme Court of the United States. The man had an alleged IQ of 61. He was mentally retarded. The accuracy of the IQ number was evidently in question, and the man was perhaps not as significantly mentally retarded as originally determined.

In the state of Pennsylvania, a top Republican operative made a joke to a crowd of 200 people about Obama supporters being "mentally retarded." Evidently, not a single person objected. Here's the joke: I was very embarrassed. I was in this parking lot and there was a man looking for a space to park, and I found a space for him. And I felt badly — he looked like he was sort of in distress. And I said, ‘Sir, here’s a place.’ And he said, ‘That’s a handicapped space.’ I said, ‘Oh I’m so sorry, I saw that Obama sticker and I thought you were mentally retarded."  You can read that story here.

During the last week, I've been arguing, fruitlessly, in the comment section with a man who insists on calling me a libtard. You can read a bit of that here.

What kind of state is Texas that kills a man who is mentally retarded? What kind of country do we live in that allows the death penalty when every single other western, industrialized, so-called "civilized" country has banned it?

What kind of country is this where people support an openly bigoted corporation that sells processed fried chicken sandwiches behind the mantle of "freedom of speech," defends the right to carry semi-automatic guns in the name of liberty from tyranny and kills a mentally retarded man in the dead of night and calls it justice?

Why should we be proud of ourselves?

Why are we silent? How can those of us who agree that this action is obscene -- the state-sanctioned, institutional murder of a mentally retarded man --  change it? How can we turn aside or laugh, even uncomfortably when people continue to use the mentally retarded, people like my daughter Sophie, as the basis for their jokes and criticism?

I think we need to scream:

The Scream, Edvard Munch

Jim Roddey, Pennsylvania's Allegheny County GOP Chair

info@rcac.net  Telephone: 412-458-0068
(Mr. Roddey's phone: 412-512-6747)
The Republican Committee of Allegheny County
100 Fleet Street, Suite 205
Pittsburgh, PA 15220

And I realize that it's stupid to argue with others on a conservative blog. I don't want to say I'm like a fly to shit, because that would imply I think conservative views are shit. I really don't.

There's something cool happening in Texas,

and by "cool," I don't mean the weather, although I hear it's pretty hot down there, too. Despite the fact that my best friend in the world is from Texas and I know that there are plenty of good folk that live in the lone star state, they seem to have serious problems with just about every area of what makes a place civilized -- at least to a gal with liberal leanings. I'm perfectly aware that California has its share of crazies, but that's not what this post is about -- nor is it about Texas, really. Or Wal-Mart -- except that there are an awful lot of Wal-Marts in Texas, and I do love a good Wal-Mart bashing post. Insults aside, I was just reeling you in to tell you about this article I read about a former Wal-Mart being bought by the city of McAllen in southern Texas and turned into a library! A fantastic looking library at that -- check it out here.

Oh, and I just remembered -- some very wealthy guy in San Antonio built the world's first adaptive amusement park for his disabled daughter and others like her a while back. That was something good coming out of Texas, too.

Texas Reader, tell me more good stuff.