"The N Train" 

“The best thing we ever did, outside of having children, was moving to Wisconsin,” I said last Tuesday as we sat in our son Joshua’s living room in New York. What if we’d taken a different path out of Manhattan 42 years ago, what if Adolph had chosen to teach at Skidmore in Saratoga Springs instead of at UWM? What if, what if, no way of knowing, and it doesn’t matter.
 
We loved living in NYC with its great museums, galleries galore, theater, dance, concerts, poetry venues, parks, public transit, sidewalks perfect for people watchers like me. I’ve spent countless days of my life drawing in Macys, Gimbels, and Central Park, in coffeehouses, buses, and subways. In fact I did a new series of “N” train and “M3” bus drawings this past week.

"More N Train" 

We loved NY but didn’t want to raise our children there. Soot coated our freshly-washed dishes if we left the kitchen window open. Snow drifts were not white. I had to walk thirteen blocks with three babies in a stroller to get to Washington Square Park. I had to trudge with a giant laundry bag and three babies to go to the laundromat, had to pile grocery bags with the kids when shopping. People pushed through crowds on the sidewalks; cars, trucks, buses, and taxis sped through the traffic-filled streets.

"The Third Avenue Bus" 

Small-scale Shorewood seems perfect for people like me. We came home from NY last Thursday, then went to the vegetarian potluck at the Urban Ecology Center and a WAVE benefit at the house next door. Friday: a sustainability committee meeting and the Fitness Center; since then I’ve taken a granddaughter to the Nutcracker, hung out with friends at Schwartz Bookstore, gone to Walgreens, Pick & Save, Beans & Barley, Whole Foods, to the ear doctor with Adolph, had dinner at our kids’ houses, gone to a salon discussion on feminism, and almost every trip was on foot or by bus.

Friends here often mention how lucky they feel to live in Shorewood, where so much is so close at hand, easily accessible without a car, and where there are so many interesting and thoughtful people. American mores have gone askew, more money more power bigger cars houses egos. Maybe life’s meant to be smaller and simpler: more salons where people sit around and discuss issues that matter, more salons and less saloons, more urban farms and gardens and less agribusiness, more creative games and less computer games, more bikes and less cars, more thought about values and less vacant worship of things.
 

It’s Wednesday, 2:45 PM, and the eastern sun gleams through purple New England asters on Atwater Bluff, through fluffy grass-tips on the bluff-top. There’s always beauty around us for those with time to look, or for those who make time, which is what I’m doing.

And now it’s Thursday, I’m here again, drawing asters and wondering why more people don’t come to the bluff and the beach to balance out hectic lives. Tiny Shorewood has no shortage of parkland. It’s a village caught between a lake and a river, between At-water and Esta-brook.

 

And last week so was I, caught between river and lake bluffs that brim with native plants, and maybe a few invaders. But then, aren’t I an invader, too, as I walk through?

At the bluff near the waterfalls in Estabrook, bikers bike past, eyes on asphalt, fishermen watch the river flow. I hope they also notice that the plants deserve more than a casual look. A wide swath of gray, green, and purple cone flowers, liatris, coreopsis, sneezeweed, and Culver's root predominated last month, along with thistle, which I love though it’s invasive. Last Friday purple, violet, yellow, and white asters and goldenrod had taken their turn.

Of course I can’t fault those fishing for watching water. The reflections are as photogenic as the trees and plants they reflect. As I look around, think about the chaos of nature, how each bend of a branch, the intermixture of flowers on a bluff, the glow of sunshine on a petal, is unexpected, I wonder why anyone would poison the earth to have a million uninterrupted, predictable blades of grass in the front yard.

If the sixth sense is intuition, then the seventh must be the sense of adventure. After all, everything we do is one, if we choose to look at it that way. When I walk out of our front door, and I do it frequently, I don’t know what will happen next, even whether or not I’ll ever walk back through it again!

Well, that’s the way I was feeling most of this winter, due to the ice crisis. I walked several miles a day despite the fact that I was terrified of falling. Last week I thought it was spring and decided not to dwell on fallen fellow Midwesterners, but on the residents, incidents, surprises, I come upon as I meander, or rush (more likely rush), through the day.

When I started to blog in June, 2006, I figured I’d write about the many interesting people I run into on a daily basis, get the character of Shorewood by showing the characters in Shorewood. After all, that is an adventure! Then I modified the concept, not wanting to name names, and blogged more about incidents than about particular people. Last year I wrote LOCKED OUT AND LOCKED IN  when I found one of my grandsons locked out of his house early in the morning and later that same day had to call 911 for a lady who’d been trapped in her garage for an hour and a half. And I blogged about the speeding car that killed a dog last month, INCIDENT AT AN INTERSECTION. 

Several days after I posted that blog, someone asked me, as I walked along Maryland Avenue, “Are you the lady who wrote the article about the dog? I had the same thing happen to me. I saw a car hit a dog and speed away, except the dog was a puppy, and the dog-walker was a little boy!”

This past January as I walked along Oakland, a woman standing alone across the street shouted to no one in particular, “Doesn’t anyone have a cell phone?” Why did she want one? Then I saw a man peering under his car’s hood, smoke billowing into his face. He slammed the hood closed, screamed a stream of unbloggable words, and the woman yelled, “Someone call 911!” I did. And I moved as far as possible from that car. About thirty years ago, Connie Wypp, one of Adolph’s art students at UWM, parked her VW Beetle across the street from our house in Bill Nichols’ driveway, leapt out of the car, and within seconds the car was in flames.

That didn’t happen this time. Even before my 911 call went through, the rescue squad arrived. Two brave men lifted the hood and put out the fire, while the combustible VW Beetle burned in my mind.

Yesterday it occurred to me as I passed familiar faces along Oakland Avenue, that I've lived in Shorewood almost 39 years and have probably seen most of these people many, many times, and even if I've never had a conversation with someone, he or she seems familiar. Curious thought. But that's my point. Usually it’s the residents, not the incidents, it’s walking everywhere, or biking, being part of the environment and not enclosed in a car, interacting with whatever's happening, that makes each day an adventure.
 

After our last Second Sunday Soup and Salad Salon, I sat down immediately to write, and that’s as far as I got. I didn’t have the time to strike while the mind was hot. Too bad. Anyway, the subject was forgiveness, and most people prefer not to think about that.

That salon was two months ago. Maybe it’s good to see what remains of the discussion as time passes. Three comments come to mind. For Elsa the main consideration in forgiveness is whether or not she can be absolutely sure she wouldn’t have done the same thing in identical circumstances. I think one of the things wrong in our society is that too many people are so self-involved that empathy has disappeared. If we placed ourselves in others’ shoes, tried to figure out why our enemies act the way they do, we might be able to figure out what to do about it.

Empathy with the enemy may be a little much to ask of most people. Yet it brings me to the other two comments. Rose told about a friend who had been married to a brilliant young scientist working on his PHD. When he was walking home from the lab late one night, a gang of boys attacked and killed him. The widow forgave her husbands’ murderers and saw to their education, did everything she could to make sure that they would never kill again. Yvette told of listening sessions in which a group of women described how abuse had affected their lives. The abusers sat in the same room.

Forgiveness doesn’t absolve the perpetrator of responsibility. It does, however, allow us to avoid being devoured by anger, hate, and greed, to concentrate on common ground and finding solutions.

Rose and Yvette sent me Emails today elaborating on their comments. Before I post them, I’ll post the introduction our facilitator, Carolyn, sent everyone ahead of time:
“In this contentious and dangerous world, do we need a dose of forgiveness, empathy and civility?  Many religions offer forgiveness as an answer to our problems.  Why is forgiveness so difficult?  Do we fear that if we forgive an enemy we are selling out, showing weakness or giving in?  Desmond Tutu says that we should pray to forgive our enemies, (and if that does not work,) pray to want to forgive our enemies, (and if that does not work,) pray to want to want ... .   I recently saw a program NOW where evangelical Christians traveled to Alaska with scientists.  Ordinarily they are on opposite sides of many issues, but they decided to try to listen to and understand each other at least on one issue, the environment and global warming.  It worked.  They were forgiving, empathetic and civil.  They were able to find common ground.  Could we use this example in other situations?  On the other hand, are there times when we need to be stubborn?”

ROSE’S MESSAGE: This is such an important subject both in interpersonal and international relations.

I think the situation with the scientist was that the widow determined that the attack was a random one and was not directed at her husband particularly and so she was able to deal with it on the level that these were troubled youth who needed to find a better way to get their kicks!

One principle that I think is important is that the person to be forgiven needs to identify what the offense was and ask for forgiveness of the offended person.  In my personal experience, I think this helps everyone not only the two involved but also those in the periphery who are affected by the conflict.

I am not sure if this was the way they handled it in South Africa during the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.  Can someone enlighten me? Also, in Chile, the people who lost their loved ones have said to their offenders. "You must live with your shame.  We can hold our heads up high and honor those we loved. "

YVETTE’S MESSAGE: As you know, forgiveness is a journey and it has been while since I felt compelled to touch this tender place.  I have been fortunate to participate in the community restorative justice program as it was offered through the Alma Center (a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending violence and abuse in intimate relationships, families and the community)  The Alma Center has a unique focus of peace education for abusive men.
 
My participation in restorative justice work, has altered and healed my soul each time, and in different ways.  Allow me to explain:
 
The Format:
 
A number of people are gathered from the community, certain people were invited because of their unique life experience.  We all sat in a large circle, men who've been convicted of domestic violence and suffered from abuse, judges, former police officers, college students, social workers, counselors, mothers, sons, fathers and daughters.  All were there for a reason.  As we all sat facing each other, most of us strangers, we were guided by our facilitator to briefly introduce ourselves and how we came (were invited) to this circle.
 
It is a three day format.  Each participant agreed to be present for 2 1/2 hours on Friday evening, 4 hours on Saturday morning, and 2 1/2 hours on Tuesday evening.
The facilitator explained that the circle we sit in and the format that we are about to follow is drawn from the Native American traditions.  We will each have an opportunity to speak while others listen.  Then she shows us a small hand held item and explains that this will be our 'talking stick'.  The person who has it is free to speak and share his or her thoughts.  Others just listen, not to comment or respond, just listen.  When that person is finished, he passes the talking stick to his neighbor, who then may share his thoughts.  Anyone who chooses not to speak is free to pass the talking stick to his neighbor.  Silence is as acceptable as speaking.
 
The Topic:
 
The topic is violence. The question we are given to respond to is, how has violence touched your life.
 
 
The Sharing:
 
I’m grateful to be sitting about 12 people away from the talking stick. I can listen and let the memories surface without judgment. I relax and listen. I am deeply moved by each persons sharing. There is even a gift in the silence. I find that the stories start deep and get deeper.
 
More to come...

MY MESSAGE: When Yvette sends me more, I’ll definitely post it!
 

My grandkids love to run around our house, inside and out, with the flashlights I keep strategically located in case of emergency. This means of course that each time there’s a blackout, and there have been several the past few years, the flashlights are never where I left them. Or else the batteries are dead. Maybe it’s better that way. It connects me with the world outside of Shorewood.

I’ve read there are only one or two hours of electricity a day in Baghdad. That makes me even more aware of all the things I can’t do when we have NO electricity for one or two hours, or seven. Last week Wednesday from about 5:30 PM to 1:30 AM, I couldn’t use the computer, listen to NPR, watch Amy Goodman on Channel 14, finish reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan for book club, nor even boil water on our gas stove.

Adolph and I ate cereal with raisins, bananas, and milk for supper, then decided to take a walk, a tradition with us during blackouts. We went outside, it was raining, and we came back in. I was thankful we were kept in by water and not by improvised explosive devices, trigger-happy soldiers, and suicide bombers.

Do you ever ask yourself whether or not you really want whatever it is you think you want? Whether that “whatever” will make you more content? I believe the world would be a better place if people asked themselves that question on a regular basis. Maybe I'll begin a series of blogs with it. It's one I'm always asking myself, even for small things.

Last Tuesday the weather report made me wonder whether or not I secretly hoped it would rain so I wouldn't have to sit at my Grass Roots table at National Night Out. Over the past several weeks, I had lined up a half dozen people to keep me company, Linda C had promised a bouquet to brighten the table, Kate T was bringing her PESTICIDE FREE signs, Tom C had supplied me with booklets on creating rain gardens and flyers about rain barrels and disconnecting downspouts, Carol C had told me where to order native plant catalogues, I had flyers about pesticide risks, about 2-4 D, about alternate lawn care, I'd bought 100 hangers for people to leave on the doorknobs of neighbors who don't know that their pesticides sicken and kill more than pestiferous weeds.

And then our daughter mentioned that Tuesday was the best night for our families to have dinner together since all eight of our grandkids were in town. I had to say no, it's National Night Out.

But I'm doing this for our grandkids, and everyone else's. Even for the lawn pesticide sprayers, who are twice as likely to get Parkinson's disease, thanks to their hatred of dandelions. Even for all those dog owners whose pets will develop fast-growing tumors. So I didn't want it to rain. Educating people about the risks is one way I can at least make a dent in a practice that's dangerous to humans, pets, and wildlife, and makes sense only for lawn care and chemical companies.

And it didn't rain. We set up the table with my purple leafy tablecloth, my Grass Roots sign (Let's keep our roots non-toxic) with my paintings of the lake (Let's keep our lake non-toxic), Linda's wild bouquet, Kate's bright yellow signs, flowery brochures, door-hangers, and a sign-up sheet. And more people came than any other year, young and old, friends and strangers, children attracted by the child's drawing on Kate's sign. They took every rain-garden pamphlet, almost a dozen pesticide-free signs, about 15 native plant catalogues, lots of flyers and brochures. Why this sudden surge of interest?

Part of it was perhaps due to the grant Shorewood received last year to disconnect downspouts, supply rain barrels, and install rain gardens in the northeast quarter of the village. I suspect much was due to global warming. Environmentalists have been warning about warming for years while corporations have been trying to convince everyone it doesn't exist. Now it's so blatant it's hard to deny. People might realize that if global warming is true, maybe other equally flimsy bills of goods are being sold to consumers, maybe these chemicals aren't as safe as corporate web sites want us to believe. Cecelia, who sat at the table with me, said she's noticed that there are less treated lawns when she walks to work at UWM. I was excited about Shorewoods’ enthusiasm for dealing with this issue. And about the event itself, the friendliness, the feeling of community.

A little later that evening my New York daughter-in-law brought their dog, Fifi, over to stay with us, and I took her (Fifi, that is) for a walk. What lawns were treated, what lawns weren't, where were the tell-tale weeds? It seemed impossible to find a safe route for Fifi. Even with the soot, the exhaust, the traffic, she's safer in New York City!

The first half of June has vanished, has gone the way of youth. The busier the days, the more they whiz, just when I’d like them to slow down. I become more aware of the importance of time: the older I am, the less I have left. That’s pretty obvious, and now comes to the forefront.

Everyone handles it differently. Some of my friends do the things they were afraid to or too busy to do when they were younger, especially visual art or writing. Some look for more immediate gratification: just enjoy the time that’s left, play bridge, golf, chess, watch movies, travel, audit classes, socialize with the people who matter to them. Others figure there’s nothing to lose, it’s time to do what they can to leave the world a better place.

I’m a mixed bag, maybe even a grab bag. When I have the opportunity to perform, teach, exhibit, hang out with grandkids, play scrabble, bike ride, dance to Paul Cebar, practice French or Spanish, plant my garden, write a poem or blog, draw dancers, paint along the lake, take political action, I think if not now, when. So I do it, and June disappears.

Tomorrow, June 16, is the first day of the second half of the month, and Peace Action has a Peace Fest at Pere Marquette Park (across the river from the PAC) from 4-10 PM to celebrate their thirty years of working for a safer world. Here’s the entertainment lineup, which includes me at 5:40:
4:15 David H.B. Drake
4:35 David Towell
4:55 Larry Penn
5:25 Jeff Poniewaz
5:40 Suzanne Rosenblatt
6:00 Holly Haebig, Harvey Taylor and Friends
6:25 Peggy Hong
6:40 Taste Emcee
7:10 Dr. Chow's Love's Medicine
8:10 K.T.'s Universal Love Band w/ Sura Faraj
9:10 The Remedies 50

Last fall, and again last week, I had a unique opportunity: to talk to Alverno transfer students about the creative process, to give them an idea of what I do, why I do it, and, most important, how I go about it. Here’s my presentation:

I'd always been a visual artist, but a month before my fortieth birthday, I had an unusual dream: I was searching in the dark for the bus stop. I had to get the number eighty, it was the only way home. My feet led me, over concrete, gravel, clay, through a cornfield, over twigs and underbrush, and finally to a bed of pine needles where I fell asleep.

When I awoke (and this is still part of the dream), light was seeping through pines, and the world was transformed. I walked along roads unknown yet hauntingly familiar, and arrived at home exhausted and exhilarated, unaware that the number eighty had passed me by.

The dream was so vivid I wrote down every detail in the middle of the night. The following day I wrote a short story. Then another. Then another, ten short shorts in a week. It was unsettling. After twenty years of trying to establish myself as an artist, why was I suddenly writing?

That was almost 30 years ago, and I'm still writing. The dream had told me to take another path, and was so intense it became the path. Popping into my mind a few days before I turned forty, it showed me a new route to eighty.

But not a totally new route. Instead of giving up art, I combined it with my writing. While drawing a weeping willow at the duck lagoon, I noticed that weeping willow leaves look like tears, so I used the words weeping willow leaves look like tears to form the leaves of the willow. I soon was drawing ducks using the word duck, and geese using the word goose, and gradually almost all of my drawings became wordrawings.

At first I wrote short shorts, and then short stories. A poet friend invited me to read with her at Woodland Pattern, and soon I was reading the stories in public, something I never thought i'd do. In 1984 Clyde Morgan, dancer in residence at UWM, invited me to write something for him to dance to. After many conversations with him, I wrote my first performance poem, Yoruba Pygmies, based on both Clyde's life as a dancer in Brazil and on my environmental concerns. Here's an excerpt:

ECHOING THE ECOSYSTEM, ECHOING THE ECOSYSTEM,
HE DANCED ON THE ROCKS LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD,
ABSORBING THE WARMTH THROUGH HIS FEET.
HE DREW FROM THE ROCKS LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD,
THE ENERGY BENEATH.
HE DREW FROM THE FORCE OF THE SEA, OF THE SEA,
FLOATING ON THE WAVES
LIKE SEAWEED, LIKE SEAWEED,
HE DREW FROM THE FORCE OF THE SEA, LIKE SEAWEED
SWEEPING SHOREWARD, SWEEPING SEAWARD.
HOW MUCH IS A MAN LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD
ABSORBING FROM THE EARTH BENEATH?
HOW MUCH IS HE LIKE SEAWEED, LIKE SEAWEED,
SWEEPING SHOREWARD, SWEEPING SEAWARD?
HOW MUCH IS HE LIKE SEAWEED
DRIFTING TILL HE'S STRANDED,
DRIFTING TILL HE'S STRANDED?

One day about two years later, I said to my dog, "Lilac, here's your water, hey, Lilac, here's your waterwaterwater." and it struck me that water rapidly repeated sounds like water. I wrote a visual poem called THE SOUND OF WATER, using the word water to look like waves. It was totally visual, handwriting flowing on paper. But one day I decided to figure out a way to read it, and discovered it was actually possible!

Basically I'm saying that all sorts of incidents and challenges can open up your life to new directions, but only if you let them. That applies to whatever you do in your everyday life.

I write in cafes, libraries, airplanes, seldom at home where there are too many other things I have to do. I paint and draw along the lakefront, in parks, department stores, in darkened theaters, immersing myself in the outside world. If I have a routine, I’m more likely to write on a regular basis. Since the unconscious mind may form images that the controlled, conscious mind could never create, before I sit down to write, I swim, bike, or walk and let my mind drift, extremely important in the creative process, at least in mine. In fact a few days before that dream, I had suddenly begun to swim every day, and I'm sure there was a connection!

I once took a fiction workshop, and in her introduction the facilitator said, writing isn't fun, it's hard work. Hmmm, I thought, work and play aren't mutually exclusive. They're often intertwined. And for me, writing is fun. Painting, drawing, dancing, anything creative is fun, so long as I can relax, get into the flow, and not worry about masterpieces. That’s one thing I never do: I never sit down, look at the blank page, and think that I’m going to draw or write a masterpiece.

My physics professor at Oberlin always emphasized that scientific discovery depends on taking advantage of accidents. Adolph, my husband and art teacher, also stressed the importance of accidents. I have to be open to, and not afraid of, the outrageous, the strange, have to be open to play, the kind without rules, to going with the flow, allowing my mind to relax so ideas enter freely and, theoretically at least, take unexpected forms. Most of my dancer drawings were done in the dark during performances. When I write a story, each sentence suggests the next. When I write a travel journal, I want to bring the reader along with me, to catch the thoughts that normally might flit away unnoticed. I sit in the middle of the action and describe what I see, and what I feel. 

Working on a poem, I often take a word and bounce it around. During the first Gulf War, I’d read we were doing apocalyptic damage to Iraq. I bounced apocalypse around and it became I pucker lips! 

APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE
I PUCKER LIPS, I PUCKER LIPS, I PUCKER LIPS
APOCALYPSE, I PUCKER LIPS, A BOMB OR A KISS 

When writing CHANGES IN THE LAKE, I noticed that if I put the last syllable of horizon at the beginning, I got in her eyes. Strange. That's what a horizon is, not a location, except in our eyes:
HORIZON IN HER EYES IN HER EYES IN HER EYES
HORIZON CRYSTALLIZING ON A PINPOINT IN HER HEAD
INFINITY ON A PINPOINT ON AN UNKNOWN PINPOINT
ON AN UNKNOWN PINPOINT IN HER HEAD.

Writing my RAISING CAIN poem, I discovered that "Cain and Abel" sounds like cannibals: FROM CAIN AND ABEL, CAIN AND ABEL, TO CANNIBALS CANNIBALS MOTHER EARTH'S ANIMALS, CONSUMING MOTHER EARTH.

I play around with ideas in the same way, say to myself I want to write about some specific idea, and let it percolate as I walk or bike or swim. Or sleep. And I always have pen and paper with me or next to me, so whatever strikes me won't slip away.