misery is company
i miss my daughters and my love who is moving on much better than i
it seems
my hollow heart echoes in my head
resounding within caverns of self-consciousness
i try to take myself apart
hoping there is something left inside
my fingers have fiddled with guitar strings again
my writing creeps back
i try to keep my hands busy so they don't distract my mouth with beer
downtown drains me
carcass at dawn
but oh, the water
Monday, July 10, 2006
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
it no longer takes a village
just a little something i wrote awhile back, thought it could use an audience.
It no longer takes a village. Now it takes a venture capitalist with a blog and a law firm. Now it takes some hollywood cheese and his million dollar diamond shoes sparkling on corporate network television. Now it takes Visa, Mastercard or American Express! Now it takes Big Business International bulldozing the friggin rainforests of the world to wake up a few liberal hippies to direct action in their own bioregion against the weathered old warrior that is industrialized logging in the Northwest. Now it takes denigrating fashion ads and decades of brainless video hypnotism for us to notice theres something wrong with our children. Hmmm, tTough one. Now it takes our very bodies withering away beneath the wiry fingers of cancer, AIDS (see conspiracy), or Alzheimers for us to realize that maybe we shoudnt have been living next to that power plant; maybe having all these chemical ingredients that we dont know what are isnt a good idea; maybe we should have traced our drinking water to its source; maybe something really is up with the Hanford Nuclear Reservation; maybe its not too late now.
With old enemies like these deadly sins wearing new masks, we need old warriors in masks of their own to do battle with them. From the darkness emerges a fairy tale clad in peasants robes, dirt poor Zapatista Mayan farmers armed with pitchforks and solar laptops combatting the International Monetary Fund and the Mexican Government, and inspiring a new generation of activists. Guerilla gardens begin springing up in metropolitan areas all over the world, on rooftops, in alleyways, on abandoned lots. Radical, free-thinking college professors like Ward Churchill step up to the plate (see badass) and deliver what such exhorbitant tuition costs should be paying for in the first place: quality controversy and informative debate. On a lighter note, massive global anti-capitalist uprisings are occurring more frequently and efficiently and on a greater scale. Green and Sustainable Business shoulder their way into the arena after the initial boom of socially responsible investing, more cool lawyers and business people that will chain themselves to the doors of the WTO preaching about the evils of governments who hop in bed with corporations (see Mussolinis definition of fascism) and then represent everyone in the courtroom later. We need more small, sustainable, local pirates with their radio stations and far-reaching ideas all over the world. Or secret shoplifters who watch the secret shoppers. We need Big Sister to beat the snot out of Big Brother. Where are the writers and artists who will craft for we, the people, a contemporary cultural mythology which transcends borders and ethnicities, genders and classes and unites the people on the common ground of food, water, shelter, clothing and medicine for everyone? Where are the wordsmiths to wrench back our language from the ad designers and corporate whores and corrupt politicians and media moguls and wield it like the magical weapon that it is, the magical weapon to which our country owes its roots? But we dont think of roots much these days do we?
Our communal sense of place and purpose that has held us together sustainably as indigenous peoples for eons has been increasingly eroded over the last ten thousand years by Civilization & Empire, Inc. Its gotten to the point now that barely anyone knows their neighbors, most money spent leaves town immediately on the corporation superhighway and people pacify themselves with mindless forms of entertainment instead of interacting with other living, breathing beings. Were Americans, we dont know who the hell we are or where the hell we are and this ahistorical, geographically ignorant mindset is reflected perfectly in the way we treat the places that we live in and around. It is mirrored in the boring shoebox practicality of our architecture, in our hopelessly linear urban planning, in our destruction of and open indifference to the natural world. As we grow more and more detached from ourselves and each other, the environment and all the teeming life around us that used to hold our utmost attention and respectnow suffers most.
Not just our own survival is at stake here, but the fates of all the species we havent already eradicated are in jeopardy as well. Even if we are just a microcosmic blink in the eye of the universe or some unnamed god and the mushrooms will clean up all the harm we do, shouldnt we have our act a little more together? Were supposed to be custodians of this place to pass on to our children and our grandchildren and their grandchildren. Theres supposed to be something left for them to work with.
But even the little things add up and at times overwhelm. Daily we are driven to subconscious distraction by a million blinking lights, at night we cannot see the stars to wrap our world in perspective and remind us of our miniscule size in the grand scheme of things. This contributes directly to the false inflation of our collective ego, not to mention just jamming our receivers full of junk, and drives us further away from the sustainable, communal model that we once practiced in harmony with our surroundings. This ruggedly reckless nation of individuals who can do everything alone except think for themselves is running the rest of the world into the ground selfishly and effectively.
In recent years a globalized industrial agricultural whirlwind coupled with rampant deforestation and over-consumption of fossil fuels in the stupidest way possible (burning them) has accelerated this cataclysmic process of environmental annihilation to the boiling point. We live in a radioactive chemical neon nightmare of automated ease and capitalist-industrialized (find a better way to say this) freedom built on the backs of screaming trees and bloody natives. But can we, as individuals, be blamed for our neophobic, rut-loving ways? Can we be blamed for not listening to the land? We who are bombarded by a virtually constant buzz of motors, engines, stereos, beeps, whirs, whistles, and clicks? It is no wonder we cannot stop for a few seconds and focus on our surroundings, or the silence inside our own heads, or the plight of a sister or brother. But we need to try.
Urbanites questing towards something better should look closer to home for the answers. Villages exist within our midst, we just have to define them. Seek out the local craftsmen, the local bakers, the local bookstores. We have the answers and solutions to most of our problems right here in front of us (some assembly required). It will enhance our individual quality of life and make our community more whole. It still takes a village, in fact, now its gonna take all the villages weve got to de-standardize the world. We just need to tell all the venture capitalists, hollywood cheeses and Big Business brokers. And we need to tell them loud.
It no longer takes a village. Now it takes a venture capitalist with a blog and a law firm. Now it takes some hollywood cheese and his million dollar diamond shoes sparkling on corporate network television. Now it takes Visa, Mastercard or American Express! Now it takes Big Business International bulldozing the friggin rainforests of the world to wake up a few liberal hippies to direct action in their own bioregion against the weathered old warrior that is industrialized logging in the Northwest. Now it takes denigrating fashion ads and decades of brainless video hypnotism for us to notice theres something wrong with our children. Hmmm, tTough one. Now it takes our very bodies withering away beneath the wiry fingers of cancer, AIDS (see conspiracy), or Alzheimers for us to realize that maybe we shoudnt have been living next to that power plant; maybe having all these chemical ingredients that we dont know what are isnt a good idea; maybe we should have traced our drinking water to its source; maybe something really is up with the Hanford Nuclear Reservation; maybe its not too late now.
With old enemies like these deadly sins wearing new masks, we need old warriors in masks of their own to do battle with them. From the darkness emerges a fairy tale clad in peasants robes, dirt poor Zapatista Mayan farmers armed with pitchforks and solar laptops combatting the International Monetary Fund and the Mexican Government, and inspiring a new generation of activists. Guerilla gardens begin springing up in metropolitan areas all over the world, on rooftops, in alleyways, on abandoned lots. Radical, free-thinking college professors like Ward Churchill step up to the plate (see badass) and deliver what such exhorbitant tuition costs should be paying for in the first place: quality controversy and informative debate. On a lighter note, massive global anti-capitalist uprisings are occurring more frequently and efficiently and on a greater scale. Green and Sustainable Business shoulder their way into the arena after the initial boom of socially responsible investing, more cool lawyers and business people that will chain themselves to the doors of the WTO preaching about the evils of governments who hop in bed with corporations (see Mussolinis definition of fascism) and then represent everyone in the courtroom later. We need more small, sustainable, local pirates with their radio stations and far-reaching ideas all over the world. Or secret shoplifters who watch the secret shoppers. We need Big Sister to beat the snot out of Big Brother. Where are the writers and artists who will craft for we, the people, a contemporary cultural mythology which transcends borders and ethnicities, genders and classes and unites the people on the common ground of food, water, shelter, clothing and medicine for everyone? Where are the wordsmiths to wrench back our language from the ad designers and corporate whores and corrupt politicians and media moguls and wield it like the magical weapon that it is, the magical weapon to which our country owes its roots? But we dont think of roots much these days do we?
Our communal sense of place and purpose that has held us together sustainably as indigenous peoples for eons has been increasingly eroded over the last ten thousand years by Civilization & Empire, Inc. Its gotten to the point now that barely anyone knows their neighbors, most money spent leaves town immediately on the corporation superhighway and people pacify themselves with mindless forms of entertainment instead of interacting with other living, breathing beings. Were Americans, we dont know who the hell we are or where the hell we are and this ahistorical, geographically ignorant mindset is reflected perfectly in the way we treat the places that we live in and around. It is mirrored in the boring shoebox practicality of our architecture, in our hopelessly linear urban planning, in our destruction of and open indifference to the natural world. As we grow more and more detached from ourselves and each other, the environment and all the teeming life around us that used to hold our utmost attention and respectnow suffers most.
Not just our own survival is at stake here, but the fates of all the species we havent already eradicated are in jeopardy as well. Even if we are just a microcosmic blink in the eye of the universe or some unnamed god and the mushrooms will clean up all the harm we do, shouldnt we have our act a little more together? Were supposed to be custodians of this place to pass on to our children and our grandchildren and their grandchildren. Theres supposed to be something left for them to work with.
But even the little things add up and at times overwhelm. Daily we are driven to subconscious distraction by a million blinking lights, at night we cannot see the stars to wrap our world in perspective and remind us of our miniscule size in the grand scheme of things. This contributes directly to the false inflation of our collective ego, not to mention just jamming our receivers full of junk, and drives us further away from the sustainable, communal model that we once practiced in harmony with our surroundings. This ruggedly reckless nation of individuals who can do everything alone except think for themselves is running the rest of the world into the ground selfishly and effectively.
In recent years a globalized industrial agricultural whirlwind coupled with rampant deforestation and over-consumption of fossil fuels in the stupidest way possible (burning them) has accelerated this cataclysmic process of environmental annihilation to the boiling point. We live in a radioactive chemical neon nightmare of automated ease and capitalist-industrialized (find a better way to say this) freedom built on the backs of screaming trees and bloody natives. But can we, as individuals, be blamed for our neophobic, rut-loving ways? Can we be blamed for not listening to the land? We who are bombarded by a virtually constant buzz of motors, engines, stereos, beeps, whirs, whistles, and clicks? It is no wonder we cannot stop for a few seconds and focus on our surroundings, or the silence inside our own heads, or the plight of a sister or brother. But we need to try.
Urbanites questing towards something better should look closer to home for the answers. Villages exist within our midst, we just have to define them. Seek out the local craftsmen, the local bakers, the local bookstores. We have the answers and solutions to most of our problems right here in front of us (some assembly required). It will enhance our individual quality of life and make our community more whole. It still takes a village, in fact, now its gonna take all the villages weve got to de-standardize the world. We just need to tell all the venture capitalists, hollywood cheeses and Big Business brokers. And we need to tell them loud.
Sunday, July 2, 2006
a life of lost love taught me to lose love
lost my rhthym of switching from labor to love to labor this last week with my lonely hunter lost in this forest of no feeling i have built around my soul over the years; buttoned lips, narrow hips, and smart ass quips kept me distant from devotion, for a life of lost love taught me to lose love, purposely misplaced like a pair of socks you're scared of wearing because the colors are too bright or don't match the way you want your eyes to look, an elaborate, idiotic defense mechanism designed to fail and fail and fail by never sharing enough. mistaken for selfishness time and again i don't know how to explain to people that in order to be myself I need time to recharge. in order to be dynamic one must maintain a variety of intensities always in motion, in order to do this one must, at times, remain perfectly still in order to learn by juxtaposition and the graceful lessons of combined opposites that which they were seeking towards the wrong extreme. confusing? well, a parent is the most rewarding and the most lonely of occupations. what better to do with my down time than attempt to dissect the loneliness? maybe it will help someone else even if it never helps me more than this simple act of sharing I am trying to re-learn.
Friday, June 23, 2006
i have been taking advantage of my girls' excellent behavior around me as of late, selfishly neglecting them at times to focus on my own problems.
But is it neglect if they are sitting playing together, totally entertained for several hours and I do other things or merely sit, observing through the window? Regardless I need to back-burner some of my more egocentric ambitions and get back to the comfortable regularity of kids books, of which I have read too few these past troubled weeks.
but the sun is on the field and soon the hawks will build their nest, a new home for a new era, a larger family than mere feathers can afford. remember these days, the quality of light at evening time like cinnamon, the emptiness, the fresh starts in the garden, the rotting bulbs tucked away beneath a bed of earth anyway, watered with tears and hope.
but the sun is on the field and soon the hawks will build their nest, a new home for a new era, a larger family than mere feathers can afford. remember these days, the quality of light at evening time like cinnamon, the emptiness, the fresh starts in the garden, the rotting bulbs tucked away beneath a bed of earth anyway, watered with tears and hope.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Snuggle my girls back to sleep-in an extra stretch from 7 to 8:30 then up to greet Al Jones delivering a picture snapped on the girls' birthday. We talk wood a bit and he destines out my day with the idea of work well done, ducking home up the hill with promises of a tractor and chains in half an hour. Change diapers, load girls into car bound for Bremerton ferry, Seattle, aquarium, adventure land with mama for the day. Quick smoke then out to guide in tractor, wave arms like I know something an 87 year old farmer doesn't about backing up a tractor but it seems to please him. We spend the next half hour fixing chains 'round large logs and winching them out of the tall grass and into the driveway. Chat a bit about war and oil. I like his style. Caught him pissing in his yard once, fuh-getta 'bout it.
Tractor and old hound dog up the hill. I spark the saw and cut off and on for the remainder of the day, filling the odd chunks here and there with sweat and tiny tasks. Plant a dozen and a half bulbs. Weed. Water. Package up books. Nice old 9 volume Melville set going down to some school or institute in Portland. A few of the *ahem* more clandestine titles that pay my bills scattered across the rural midwest. Box of highly specific advanced chemistry books to Australia disguised as old picture books of London. Back outside to split some wood. Enjoy a beer and some smoke, book in the hammock for a short spell before a turkey-spinach sandwich and more chainsawing. Like an ant I work away the summer days, thinking of winter. Then, under winter's spell I sit huddled and dreaming of summer.
Check on Rietta, our injured lonely hen. She was just out and around the yard for the first time in weeks the other day. Feed her some scratch by hand, her nervous clucking filling the small room. Ivy and blackberry creeping through the cracks. Nature reclaiming the unnatural. Cosmic compost. At a loss I start raking leaves in the one part of the yard shaded by our house. After a few predictable minutes Steph and the girls pull into the driveway. We share a few fast words, I shoot off for charcoal and chips, little sugar fix. Then she shoots off for work and a night in Olympia, our fair city. The girls and I say hi, settle in, an easy comfortable routine for us now.
Under this waning pacific silver dome i grill a steak soaked in St. Peter's ale, raspberry mustard, black pepper, apple juice and thyme, throw an onion, and a mushroom on there for variety's spice for my daughters and i to share over a light salad, telling them to chew, chew, chew and make sure to eat some greens. Then a quick swing, scarleht in the chair, lyli cuddling with me, papa, in our hammock beneath the ancient apple tree I have named "Given." Swap spots and cuddle Scarleht for a bit, giggles in the June air. Some talk of mama's house and papa's house, our transition into this new jungle, how to be strong and different and whole despite the distance and troubles. Hopefully once we rip this thing up we can maybe do some of that foundation laying that never got done happened. shit. cheers. sullen and silent and strong. just like always. and damn it if it doesn't work for you.
Tractor and old hound dog up the hill. I spark the saw and cut off and on for the remainder of the day, filling the odd chunks here and there with sweat and tiny tasks. Plant a dozen and a half bulbs. Weed. Water. Package up books. Nice old 9 volume Melville set going down to some school or institute in Portland. A few of the *ahem* more clandestine titles that pay my bills scattered across the rural midwest. Box of highly specific advanced chemistry books to Australia disguised as old picture books of London. Back outside to split some wood. Enjoy a beer and some smoke, book in the hammock for a short spell before a turkey-spinach sandwich and more chainsawing. Like an ant I work away the summer days, thinking of winter. Then, under winter's spell I sit huddled and dreaming of summer.
Check on Rietta, our injured lonely hen. She was just out and around the yard for the first time in weeks the other day. Feed her some scratch by hand, her nervous clucking filling the small room. Ivy and blackberry creeping through the cracks. Nature reclaiming the unnatural. Cosmic compost. At a loss I start raking leaves in the one part of the yard shaded by our house. After a few predictable minutes Steph and the girls pull into the driveway. We share a few fast words, I shoot off for charcoal and chips, little sugar fix. Then she shoots off for work and a night in Olympia, our fair city. The girls and I say hi, settle in, an easy comfortable routine for us now.
Under this waning pacific silver dome i grill a steak soaked in St. Peter's ale, raspberry mustard, black pepper, apple juice and thyme, throw an onion, and a mushroom on there for variety's spice for my daughters and i to share over a light salad, telling them to chew, chew, chew and make sure to eat some greens. Then a quick swing, scarleht in the chair, lyli cuddling with me, papa, in our hammock beneath the ancient apple tree I have named "Given." Swap spots and cuddle Scarleht for a bit, giggles in the June air. Some talk of mama's house and papa's house, our transition into this new jungle, how to be strong and different and whole despite the distance and troubles. Hopefully once we rip this thing up we can maybe do some of that foundation laying that never got done happened. shit. cheers. sullen and silent and strong. just like always. and damn it if it doesn't work for you.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
"Your loneliness, your anger towards the status quo, and your relationship are unremarkable."
Thanks to all the folks who make a compassionate point of contacting me with advice or criticism... well, let's just call them what they are: words. Words have always been the best medicine in/for my book and hell, even the nasty comments and letters stroke my multi-egos. I only hope I can return all these small favors before I lose them or they crowd me out of house and home. Sorry I have been absent for a spell, I have many things to think about before I can share my soul any more.
Sky,
I don't know if you removed the name of that letter's pen, or if it was sent to you as anonymous, or really what you thought of it (other than that it was kind). Is your blog a journal or a forum? (That is, is it single-ego driven, or multi-ego?) I don't know, that's why I wrote you an email.
Your loneliness, your anger towards the status quo, and your relationship with Stephanie (whether or not as lovers, whether or not "successful") are unremarkable. I would go so far as to think of this set as... the human condition (or at least part of it). If you wear them on your sleave and others are turned off by this, well, that is their choice. Feeling what you feel won't harden your heart or cause you despair. I have those feelings; I think of them as 'ripening' over time. To dismiss them simply as negative is stupid. And I could go into a bunch of duality bullshit here, but we don't need that just to savor loneliness.
I can't offer you sage advise, because I'm young like you. But I disagree with the paradigm that age equals wisdom, or that wise advise is better advice (or that a heart filled with joy isn't also filled with sorrow). In my opinion your daughters will grow up to be successful confident women irregardless of you and Stephanie staying "together"; ones most important relationship is that to one's self, that is the foundation for and what ultimately informs our offspring. Consequently, I think you should base your decisions on your feelings.
Perhaps this is just where I'll differ in opinion from the 'sage', perhaps it is a generational separation, or an individual one, but I don't think it's critical for a child's parents to stay together - especially if they don't want to. While it is certainly my feeling that children deserve a relationship with both of their parents (and other adults), the parents themselves don't have to live, sleep or fuck together.
You and I may differ when it comes to spiritual interpretation, but we are talking about a practical and corporeal matter here, and I find any talk of Spirit, spirit or anything worded 'God' a total diversion from 'the real', and an abstraction in any case ( i.e., God is irrelevant to this topic). Anybody can think of this view as nihilistic or narcissistic, or think me a typical victim of postmodernity, but again - that's their choice. For me, all of this is an affirmation.
Unanonymously,
Gavin S.
Sky,
I don't know if you removed the name of that letter's pen, or if it was sent to you as anonymous, or really what you thought of it (other than that it was kind). Is your blog a journal or a forum? (That is, is it single-ego driven, or multi-ego?) I don't know, that's why I wrote you an email.
Your loneliness, your anger towards the status quo, and your relationship with Stephanie (whether or not as lovers, whether or not "successful") are unremarkable. I would go so far as to think of this set as... the human condition (or at least part of it). If you wear them on your sleave and others are turned off by this, well, that is their choice. Feeling what you feel won't harden your heart or cause you despair. I have those feelings; I think of them as 'ripening' over time. To dismiss them simply as negative is stupid. And I could go into a bunch of duality bullshit here, but we don't need that just to savor loneliness.
I can't offer you sage advise, because I'm young like you. But I disagree with the paradigm that age equals wisdom, or that wise advise is better advice (or that a heart filled with joy isn't also filled with sorrow). In my opinion your daughters will grow up to be successful confident women irregardless of you and Stephanie staying "together"; ones most important relationship is that to one's self, that is the foundation for and what ultimately informs our offspring. Consequently, I think you should base your decisions on your feelings.
Perhaps this is just where I'll differ in opinion from the 'sage', perhaps it is a generational separation, or an individual one, but I don't think it's critical for a child's parents to stay together - especially if they don't want to. While it is certainly my feeling that children deserve a relationship with both of their parents (and other adults), the parents themselves don't have to live, sleep or fuck together.
You and I may differ when it comes to spiritual interpretation, but we are talking about a practical and corporeal matter here, and I find any talk of Spirit, spirit or anything worded 'God' a total diversion from 'the real', and an abstraction in any case ( i.e., God is irrelevant to this topic). Anybody can think of this view as nihilistic or narcissistic, or think me a typical victim of postmodernity, but again - that's their choice. For me, all of this is an affirmation.
Unanonymously,
Gavin S.
Sunday, June 4, 2006
a kind letter in rough waters
Dear Sky,
Because you choose to bare your inner life on Pirate Papa, I, who love you more than you know, am writing to tell you…
Your loneliness, your failing relationship, your anger toward the status quo will eventually harden into a heart of bitterness and despair.
Do you want to have a successful relationship with Stephanie? Make a commitment and keep it. You seem to be committed to many aspects of your life… living an independent life style, setting an example of responsibility toward the environment, writing, operating your store, and caring for your daughters. But when you speak of your relationship with the most important person in your life your attitude seems to be fatalistic and out of control.
You will never be able to give you daughters the hope and security they require to become successful confident women if they see the man in their life show so little commitment to the most important relationship they will ever need.
You and Stephanie have gone down a path by deciding to become parents. Get a plan
that will result in a successful effort. The areas in which you are failing are directly related to unwillingness to communicate and basing your bond to each other on feelings.
Your bond must be based on commitment and trust. This bond is developed in the Spirit. The Living Spirit Who will counsel, forgive and comfort. The Living Spirit to whom you and Stephanie can make a vow and become accountable. With commitment and guidance your relationship can be joyful and worth the effort.
Deciding to sleep apart is not going to bring you together. All of the areas to which you are now committed are dust and stuff compared to the relationships you have the opportunity to build for a lifetime. Give your relationships the value they deserve.
I am writing to you from experience. When you were 2 years old, my daughter, XXXXXXX, died in an accident. The divorce rate for couples with dead children is 85%. We were healed of our black despair after three years of horrible suffering and damage to our relationship. We were made new by the Holy Spirit of the Living God.
The Spirit can make you new. Your heart can be open and joyful. Do not think I am writing to you about religion or Religion. Do not think that I am judging the life you have chosen or the commitments you have made. I am writing because I read of your loneliness and want you to know that I care.
We are praying for you, Stephanie, Lyli and Scarleht to find peace and hope.
With Agape Love,
Anonymous
Because you choose to bare your inner life on Pirate Papa, I, who love you more than you know, am writing to tell you…
Your loneliness, your failing relationship, your anger toward the status quo will eventually harden into a heart of bitterness and despair.
Do you want to have a successful relationship with Stephanie? Make a commitment and keep it. You seem to be committed to many aspects of your life… living an independent life style, setting an example of responsibility toward the environment, writing, operating your store, and caring for your daughters. But when you speak of your relationship with the most important person in your life your attitude seems to be fatalistic and out of control.
You will never be able to give you daughters the hope and security they require to become successful confident women if they see the man in their life show so little commitment to the most important relationship they will ever need.
You and Stephanie have gone down a path by deciding to become parents. Get a plan
that will result in a successful effort. The areas in which you are failing are directly related to unwillingness to communicate and basing your bond to each other on feelings.
Your bond must be based on commitment and trust. This bond is developed in the Spirit. The Living Spirit Who will counsel, forgive and comfort. The Living Spirit to whom you and Stephanie can make a vow and become accountable. With commitment and guidance your relationship can be joyful and worth the effort.
Deciding to sleep apart is not going to bring you together. All of the areas to which you are now committed are dust and stuff compared to the relationships you have the opportunity to build for a lifetime. Give your relationships the value they deserve.
I am writing to you from experience. When you were 2 years old, my daughter, XXXXXXX, died in an accident. The divorce rate for couples with dead children is 85%. We were healed of our black despair after three years of horrible suffering and damage to our relationship. We were made new by the Holy Spirit of the Living God.
The Spirit can make you new. Your heart can be open and joyful. Do not think I am writing to you about religion or Religion. Do not think that I am judging the life you have chosen or the commitments you have made. I am writing because I read of your loneliness and want you to know that I care.
We are praying for you, Stephanie, Lyli and Scarleht to find peace and hope.
With Agape Love,
Anonymous
Saturday, June 3, 2006
trying to shelve my resentment and anger and hurt. donning the mask i have to wear today for lyli and scarleht's party, to pretend steph and my's relationship is doing better than it is. but this day is about them, not us. they are two years and two days old today and i cannot believe it is true. 732 days have passed since that strange time in the hospital in Tacoma when you entered this world and we were still fooling ourselves.
i love you both more than words or time can tell. i express it in little doses each day, unseen by any eyes save yours. it's always the real workers that don't get any credit, toiling away under cover of darkness or blindness or ignorance while the world goes on its merry tragic way. blink and two months are gone. just gone. and you have too few memories of it all. and next year's tears will wash away our sins of today and tomorrow we won't even remember the pain or the love or the lessons we tried to teach.
you soak up my lessons, exhausting me at times but always pushing to learn more, absorb more, say more, try ten new things before some noontime hits for nap and snack time. sometime i hope you can look back and be grateful for this breath of fresh air I am trying to start you off with, this break frmo it all before the real world sets in and screws everything up. but for now we have the trees, we feed the birds, we clean the house, read books, talk about the world and what is in it. for now we try to simply be by being simple and hope the world will leave us alone for a spell.
i love you both more than words or time can tell. i express it in little doses each day, unseen by any eyes save yours. it's always the real workers that don't get any credit, toiling away under cover of darkness or blindness or ignorance while the world goes on its merry tragic way. blink and two months are gone. just gone. and you have too few memories of it all. and next year's tears will wash away our sins of today and tomorrow we won't even remember the pain or the love or the lessons we tried to teach.
you soak up my lessons, exhausting me at times but always pushing to learn more, absorb more, say more, try ten new things before some noontime hits for nap and snack time. sometime i hope you can look back and be grateful for this breath of fresh air I am trying to start you off with, this break frmo it all before the real world sets in and screws everything up. but for now we have the trees, we feed the birds, we clean the house, read books, talk about the world and what is in it. for now we try to simply be by being simple and hope the world will leave us alone for a spell.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
all the yesterdays...
for me are not catalogued in a neat linear calendar, but more like a jar of change: each bygone day deposited haphazardly. occasionally stirred and sometimes spent. people tell stories about times or events I was present for and they ellicit memories like books read long ago, details blurred, different eye-witness reports, filtered, dubious truths.
a strong life thread frays the weaker one when the two meet. if by chance the gods crosshatched your life line on that given gifted day perhaps you will walk tall, but at what cost to those close to you?
across the state again today in a rented blue kia rio. from the yakima valley all the way to walla walla we drove through a jungle-gym of rainbows. two triples you could see from tip to tip. one bright shard stretching straight out of the penitentiary. lyli and scarleht caught on immediately, echoing my whispered breaths of "rainbow", prefacing it with "prit-ty".
alone, my mind too scattered to track the novel's lines. i sweat, abdomen aches, arnica and cough syrup. another movie in the background, uncared for.
a strong life thread frays the weaker one when the two meet. if by chance the gods crosshatched your life line on that given gifted day perhaps you will walk tall, but at what cost to those close to you?
across the state again today in a rented blue kia rio. from the yakima valley all the way to walla walla we drove through a jungle-gym of rainbows. two triples you could see from tip to tip. one bright shard stretching straight out of the penitentiary. lyli and scarleht caught on immediately, echoing my whispered breaths of "rainbow", prefacing it with "prit-ty".
alone, my mind too scattered to track the novel's lines. i sweat, abdomen aches, arnica and cough syrup. another movie in the background, uncared for.
tired of having too little time to feel.
i have been reduced to suffering the scattered attentions of only those few friends who can find the time to loan to me. how are they to see that it is indeed a sound investment? how are they to understand the passages time now flows through for those like me? and how am i to make time to explain such matters? i can barely interact with grown humans these days, much less make heads or tails of complex issues. when one is afforded the absolute minimum ammount of time what is one expected to do with it? what makes them happy i could only hope.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
napped in old green hammock. girls awkwardly contorted along my torso snoring lazy circles...
...stretch from knees to chin. watching insects buzz their business around green living yard. cracked soil caked on hands flipping pages of Donleavy's decadent Ginger Man under ancient apple leaves and limbs. water. light. grow.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
observation log #0975
yesterday scarleht spoke her first three word sentence: "mama go car" followed immediately by Lyli... which leads me to believe they already knew it and just decided to clue me in.
another interesting thought today when we ran into two little seventeen month old twin girls on campus and ours frolicked with theirs for a spell, they were wearing matching outfits, matching gold tennis bracelets, the works - anyway, what if, like magnets, likely charged or energized twins will repell each other at an even more extreme curve?
the idea came to me when i watched each of these girls go in the opposite direction on their ma, making her dash about. she with two other kids 18 and 16 so i don't feel too bad, plus she looks rich. named Immelda (sp?). her husband stands 20 yards away and points a video camera at us the entire time. she dashes back and forth yelling at her kids in both english and spanish, trying to corral wild horses that should run free.
i try not to judge but cannot help myself.
slowly getting our garden in piece by piece. steph and i fight and talk, have alternately good and bad times, as bi-polar as our northwest weather. we are giving each other space, which sometimes mean we are too far away when we need each other most but lately our proximity leads to a bucket of crabs, as soon as one can crawl out, the others crawl out over it and ghosts boil out through words. ironically i get the least support from the places that i need it from the most and the most support from the fronts and unders that are already well worked.
slowly slowly i am getting my life back in order. now, two years into their lives when we can finally stand up for air, realizing we can barely breath and dizzy from the stand up. dancers and dreamers can't stay in one place. tomorrow's faces aren't the same as yesterdays. the answers are not always blowing in the wind.
another interesting thought today when we ran into two little seventeen month old twin girls on campus and ours frolicked with theirs for a spell, they were wearing matching outfits, matching gold tennis bracelets, the works - anyway, what if, like magnets, likely charged or energized twins will repell each other at an even more extreme curve?
the idea came to me when i watched each of these girls go in the opposite direction on their ma, making her dash about. she with two other kids 18 and 16 so i don't feel too bad, plus she looks rich. named Immelda (sp?). her husband stands 20 yards away and points a video camera at us the entire time. she dashes back and forth yelling at her kids in both english and spanish, trying to corral wild horses that should run free.
i try not to judge but cannot help myself.
slowly getting our garden in piece by piece. steph and i fight and talk, have alternately good and bad times, as bi-polar as our northwest weather. we are giving each other space, which sometimes mean we are too far away when we need each other most but lately our proximity leads to a bucket of crabs, as soon as one can crawl out, the others crawl out over it and ghosts boil out through words. ironically i get the least support from the places that i need it from the most and the most support from the fronts and unders that are already well worked.
slowly slowly i am getting my life back in order. now, two years into their lives when we can finally stand up for air, realizing we can barely breath and dizzy from the stand up. dancers and dreamers can't stay in one place. tomorrow's faces aren't the same as yesterdays. the answers are not always blowing in the wind.
Saturday, May 6, 2006
decomposing love
to separate into individual components or basic elements
to breakdown into constituent parts
to rot, to cause to rot, to decay, desintegrate or putrefy
to resolve into original elements
to set free from previously existing forms of chemical combination
to bring to dissolution
...............................
#1 A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
#2 A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
#3
1. Sexual passion.
2. Sexual intercourse.
3. A love affair.
#4 An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object.
#5 A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment.
#6 An expression of one's affection: Send him my love.
#7
1. A strong predilection or enthusiasm: a love of language.
2. The object of such an enthusiasm: The outdoors is her greatest love.
#8 Love Mythology. Eros or Cupid.
#9 often Love Christianity. Charity.
But it's also a zero in tennis.
......................................
Too much to write about today so I'll try to write mostly about the good things.
Scarleht and Lyli are now verbally connecting multiple ideas into short two word sentences, something they have been doing with sign for some time now. Scarleht says: "Mo Sho-eo" for more cereal (Lyli's is Mo-Shee-Who), "No Lala" - when they want the cat to stop doing whatever she's doing or when they want to feel powerful, "Mo-Ka" means more cars as they gesture excitedly and scream out the windows as we drive, "Yah Papa". Lyli said "Kee-o" today for Coyote while Scarleht referred to herself by name in reference to wanting her shoes on ("Kah-Lo Shu"). Lyli says "Bothes" for boxes, Scarleht "bao" for box. Speaking of which, please check out my friend Rick's amazing website Talking With Toddlers who I recently discovered is a linguist and speech-language pathologist with loads of experience with infants! His site also features some excellent autism links and tons of valuable information. And he runs Olyblog!
The other morning I awoke to Scarleht and Lyli waving hello at their own hands and/or waving at their own faces. It was one of the most precious things I have ever witnessed. Joined the ranks of amazing things this week along with Lyli running around the downstairs with a shirt on her head and little toy plastic silverware in her hands. Or Scarleht bringing Rob a beer the other day at the bookstore. She could barely carry it. It was her idea, I swear. She saw me having one and said "Rah, Bee!" and grabbed one and ran all the way out to the front with it.
Last weekend was Arts Walk in Olympia so Last Word was packed. Plus we got our old letterpress up and running, although the name is still up in the air. The girls and Steph wandered around at Arts Walk for a bit while I worked my ass off. When I took them for a short walk we stopped to dance for some street musicians and played a rhythm box. The ladies are getting some excellent dance moves down. Stayed in Oly Friday and Saturday, quite a wild time with wily old robert roderick ross. Then on Sunday night the girls and I stayed at Rob's house in Olympia, something we hadn't really done before/in a long time. The beautiful Annie was nice enough to let us use her bed and I put them down and joined the gang to watch Chuck Norris' Invasion USA on a projector screen (Thanks Media Loan!) in the side-yard overlooking Olympia. What a horrible horrible actor and film. Gotta love it though. Thanks Stu for your awesome party-throwing skills, hospitality, strange taste and photography skills (and for making a cool documentary on us setting up the letterpress).
Girls slept great, woke up happy then down into Oly for some breakfast at Otto's before meeting with Jade and her sponsor to talk about the press and Jade's contract. Spent Monday May Day in Oly (long day!) until Steph got off work in Shelton and came to pick us up. Good times. Hadn't spent that long in Oly in one stretch for awhile now. Laid the girls down for a few naps up in the loft at the bookshop that weekend, by necessity, not choice. Not the cleanest, safest of settings but hey, what it lacks in cleanliness it makes up for in character, right? The girls got a kick out of the May Day rally but faded before the march started, shame since we got invited to march at the front with the parents and immigrants and the welfare rights organizing coalition. Ahhh well, we made our handprints on the big banner to deliver walk up to the capitol building and had our pix snapped to send to Guv'nah Gregoire regarding the future of Washington welfare.
Geeez. so much in a week. spent the last few days cleaning house (!) and dancing to the movie credits, laughing at the rolling words, playing the heater and bathroom vent like musical instruments. tomorrow it's back to oly to work the weekend at the bookstore, enjoy a few drinks, maybe write a poem. i am lonely and life is crazy but the dude abides.
to breakdown into constituent parts
to rot, to cause to rot, to decay, desintegrate or putrefy
to resolve into original elements
to set free from previously existing forms of chemical combination
to bring to dissolution
...............................
#1 A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
#2 A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
#3
1. Sexual passion.
2. Sexual intercourse.
3. A love affair.
#4 An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object.
#5 A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment.
#6 An expression of one's affection: Send him my love.
#7
1. A strong predilection or enthusiasm: a love of language.
2. The object of such an enthusiasm: The outdoors is her greatest love.
#8 Love Mythology. Eros or Cupid.
#9 often Love Christianity. Charity.
But it's also a zero in tennis.
......................................
Too much to write about today so I'll try to write mostly about the good things.
Scarleht and Lyli are now verbally connecting multiple ideas into short two word sentences, something they have been doing with sign for some time now. Scarleht says: "Mo Sho-eo" for more cereal (Lyli's is Mo-Shee-Who), "No Lala" - when they want the cat to stop doing whatever she's doing or when they want to feel powerful, "Mo-Ka" means more cars as they gesture excitedly and scream out the windows as we drive, "Yah Papa". Lyli said "Kee-o" today for Coyote while Scarleht referred to herself by name in reference to wanting her shoes on ("Kah-Lo Shu"). Lyli says "Bothes" for boxes, Scarleht "bao" for box. Speaking of which, please check out my friend Rick's amazing website Talking With Toddlers who I recently discovered is a linguist and speech-language pathologist with loads of experience with infants! His site also features some excellent autism links and tons of valuable information. And he runs Olyblog!
The other morning I awoke to Scarleht and Lyli waving hello at their own hands and/or waving at their own faces. It was one of the most precious things I have ever witnessed. Joined the ranks of amazing things this week along with Lyli running around the downstairs with a shirt on her head and little toy plastic silverware in her hands. Or Scarleht bringing Rob a beer the other day at the bookstore. She could barely carry it. It was her idea, I swear. She saw me having one and said "Rah, Bee!" and grabbed one and ran all the way out to the front with it.
Last weekend was Arts Walk in Olympia so Last Word was packed. Plus we got our old letterpress up and running, although the name is still up in the air. The girls and Steph wandered around at Arts Walk for a bit while I worked my ass off. When I took them for a short walk we stopped to dance for some street musicians and played a rhythm box. The ladies are getting some excellent dance moves down. Stayed in Oly Friday and Saturday, quite a wild time with wily old robert roderick ross. Then on Sunday night the girls and I stayed at Rob's house in Olympia, something we hadn't really done before/in a long time. The beautiful Annie was nice enough to let us use her bed and I put them down and joined the gang to watch Chuck Norris' Invasion USA on a projector screen (Thanks Media Loan!) in the side-yard overlooking Olympia. What a horrible horrible actor and film. Gotta love it though. Thanks Stu for your awesome party-throwing skills, hospitality, strange taste and photography skills (and for making a cool documentary on us setting up the letterpress).
Girls slept great, woke up happy then down into Oly for some breakfast at Otto's before meeting with Jade and her sponsor to talk about the press and Jade's contract. Spent Monday May Day in Oly (long day!) until Steph got off work in Shelton and came to pick us up. Good times. Hadn't spent that long in Oly in one stretch for awhile now. Laid the girls down for a few naps up in the loft at the bookshop that weekend, by necessity, not choice. Not the cleanest, safest of settings but hey, what it lacks in cleanliness it makes up for in character, right? The girls got a kick out of the May Day rally but faded before the march started, shame since we got invited to march at the front with the parents and immigrants and the welfare rights organizing coalition. Ahhh well, we made our handprints on the big banner to deliver walk up to the capitol building and had our pix snapped to send to Guv'nah Gregoire regarding the future of Washington welfare.
Geeez. so much in a week. spent the last few days cleaning house (!) and dancing to the movie credits, laughing at the rolling words, playing the heater and bathroom vent like musical instruments. tomorrow it's back to oly to work the weekend at the bookstore, enjoy a few drinks, maybe write a poem. i am lonely and life is crazy but the dude abides.
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Motherhood @ the Brotherhood
Everyone’s favorite scenester booze dungeon in Olympia is throwing a sweet party for Mama’s on Mother’s Day: Motherhood at the Brotherhood, with childcare upstairs in the old labor lodge! I think the festivities go from 4 to 7 but I will make corrections as I find out more. Hope they have a legion of taxi-cabs with car seats for all those tipsy parents.
Monday, May 1, 2006
Kidzines, Mamazines, Rad Dads, Revolution and self-publishing
sweet zines we’ve got in the Olympia ‘Zine Library at Last Word Books:
*Ernie’s Fun Book for Being a Kid! – A strange, rather risque collection of traditionally taboo information for youngsters – most parents will not like a good deal of this ‘zine but it is rather humorous for us parents to peruse and has a lot of right-on advice for kids as well but you might want to filter it a bit. Brought to you by the same folks that published: Daddy Shoots Automatic Firearms; Am I Old Enough to Try Crack Cocaine?; Elmo and Imperialism; Oscar the Grouch Learns About Marxism; Garfield the Bourgeios Slob; and many others. Write to Sesame Street Magazine P.O. Box 55518 Boulder, CO 80322-5518
*Mamazine – lots of back issues, published in Olympia, Washington (ye-ha!). One of the best out there for young mamas, radical mamas, conscious mamas, searching papas and thoughtful parents.
*Rad Dad 2 & 3 - Published by Tomas down in Berkeley (just found his 'zine boxcutter as well, great stuff!. Here's his blog that will hopefully soon take wing and here's an interview with him on mamazine.com. Write Rad Dad at: Tomas Moniz 1636 Fairview Street
Berkley, CA 94703 for copies and more information. He's looking for submissions for issue 4 I believe so start writing!
*East Village Inky No. 5 - http://www.ayunhalliday.com/inky/ - one of the best known mamazines published by Ayun Halliday out of New York, an excellent resource.
*Wemoon’s Army – A nice little ‘zine focusing on radical ideas for mothers, baby making and revolution. Very concise, solid advice. Write to: Skunk Rising PO Box 12119 Eugene, Oregon 97400 -- I don’t know if this one is still around or not.
*Revolution Kid Style Vol. 1 #2 – From December 1999, billed as The Official K.I.D.S. Newsletter – This one is awesome! Just four pages but includes a sexual bill of rights for kids, a short article on kids, free trade and the W.T.O., principles of education, truancy law info, youth liberation, curfews and a whole slew more. Published in Portland of course, write to: K.I.D.S. PO Box 2624 Portland, OR 97208-2624
You should write these folks first if you want copies but if you can't track any down I would be happy to copy any of them for postage and a buck or something cool. Drop me an e-mail if you're interested. Oh yeah, Joe might have some of them up at ZineLibrary.net. The 'Zine Library also has a little blog that I don't get to work on much. Go there and maybe I'll do more.
*Ernie’s Fun Book for Being a Kid! – A strange, rather risque collection of traditionally taboo information for youngsters – most parents will not like a good deal of this ‘zine but it is rather humorous for us parents to peruse and has a lot of right-on advice for kids as well but you might want to filter it a bit. Brought to you by the same folks that published: Daddy Shoots Automatic Firearms; Am I Old Enough to Try Crack Cocaine?; Elmo and Imperialism; Oscar the Grouch Learns About Marxism; Garfield the Bourgeios Slob; and many others. Write to Sesame Street Magazine P.O. Box 55518 Boulder, CO 80322-5518
*Mamazine – lots of back issues, published in Olympia, Washington (ye-ha!). One of the best out there for young mamas, radical mamas, conscious mamas, searching papas and thoughtful parents.
*Rad Dad 2 & 3 - Published by Tomas down in Berkeley (just found his 'zine boxcutter as well, great stuff!. Here's his blog that will hopefully soon take wing and here's an interview with him on mamazine.com. Write Rad Dad at: Tomas Moniz 1636 Fairview Street
Berkley, CA 94703 for copies and more information. He's looking for submissions for issue 4 I believe so start writing!
*East Village Inky No. 5 - http://www.ayunhalliday.com/inky/ - one of the best known mamazines published by Ayun Halliday out of New York, an excellent resource.
*Wemoon’s Army – A nice little ‘zine focusing on radical ideas for mothers, baby making and revolution. Very concise, solid advice. Write to: Skunk Rising PO Box 12119 Eugene, Oregon 97400 -- I don’t know if this one is still around or not.
*Revolution Kid Style Vol. 1 #2 – From December 1999, billed as The Official K.I.D.S. Newsletter – This one is awesome! Just four pages but includes a sexual bill of rights for kids, a short article on kids, free trade and the W.T.O., principles of education, truancy law info, youth liberation, curfews and a whole slew more. Published in Portland of course, write to: K.I.D.S. PO Box 2624 Portland, OR 97208-2624
You should write these folks first if you want copies but if you can't track any down I would be happy to copy any of them for postage and a buck or something cool. Drop me an e-mail if you're interested. Oh yeah, Joe might have some of them up at ZineLibrary.net. The 'Zine Library also has a little blog that I don't get to work on much. Go there and maybe I'll do more.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
determined today that grandpa and grandma do indeed have toes
just like mama who's at work in the car, just like papa who's right here, just like sister and lala (la gata).
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
where gee-mee means monkey
what a contemporary pain... having your digital camera out of commission. it's one of those nearly unbearable distresses that pale in comparison to anything really bad but make americans pull their hair out.
up at 4:30 to work online and watch house of sand and fog, ben kingsley kicks ass. have a wet cough i'm going to treat today, slippery elm, mullein, cherry bark, horehound, hack it all up.
outside the sun ribbons the horizon with its pale knife of light. i sit beneath an old blanket my father gave me years ago, the edges not yet fraying, surrounded by piles of books i will pore over today in-between the crazy. Lucifer, our one remaining rooster, greets the dawn with his shrill coco-rico (were we in France) or Kick-er-riki (for you Germans). Lyli and Scarleht sleep upstairs in their temporary room (we've decided one last clockwise rotation of residents upstairs will be the right fix) and Steph in her room, the one with the blue wall, an east window and a south window, the room that will be theirs sometime soon, the room with innocent light.
today the girls and i will put the garden in, fold clothes, finish the mountain of dishes, & go for a short walk in the woods (papa can't carry both of 'em too far anymore when they're exhausted so we stick close to home). i find happiness these days in keeping busy and trying to lend as many moments a day to thought, or its utter absence, as possible.
up at 4:30 to work online and watch house of sand and fog, ben kingsley kicks ass. have a wet cough i'm going to treat today, slippery elm, mullein, cherry bark, horehound, hack it all up.
outside the sun ribbons the horizon with its pale knife of light. i sit beneath an old blanket my father gave me years ago, the edges not yet fraying, surrounded by piles of books i will pore over today in-between the crazy. Lucifer, our one remaining rooster, greets the dawn with his shrill coco-rico (were we in France) or Kick-er-riki (for you Germans). Lyli and Scarleht sleep upstairs in their temporary room (we've decided one last clockwise rotation of residents upstairs will be the right fix) and Steph in her room, the one with the blue wall, an east window and a south window, the room that will be theirs sometime soon, the room with innocent light.
today the girls and i will put the garden in, fold clothes, finish the mountain of dishes, & go for a short walk in the woods (papa can't carry both of 'em too far anymore when they're exhausted so we stick close to home). i find happiness these days in keeping busy and trying to lend as many moments a day to thought, or its utter absence, as possible.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006
verbose little varmints, stupid stupid fighting parents, printing presses and woodstoves
gosh. when a wave comes to shore, sure enough your pretty sand castle gets washed straight away but all these little bits of new dreams rise to the surface to be molded into the next castle with your fresh hands.
both lyli and scarleht have been wandering around the house muttering "here ya go" while handing things to each other, me, stephanie, the cat, the wall, the oven, the woodstove,whatever. today Lyli said "there ya go", "left foot" and "i like pants" (although she did not enunciate very well). Scarleht said "no poop!", "hhh-ome", "Ka" (which means rock), "roh-ti papa" which translates roughly to "flower for papa" and the one that blew me away because I could almost hear each syllable when she said it: "When's mama comin' home?"
Add these to their already formidable arsenal of boogadies, moes (more), nos, uh-ohs, la-las...
shit, gotta add more wood to the fire, hold on
grammas, gran-papas, hah-los, hi-los, sooshta or shooshoo(not sure how to spell this one and the sound of it changes all the time anyway but it means sister or chicken)
i enjoy these times spent with lyli and scarleht, watching and listening to them formulate their worlds. even if i do waste too much of it on chores or books or a movie every now and then I try too to get as much play time in as well and spread it out over the whole day while they follow me around the house and yard and help with chores (read make small messes while i deal with big messes). Right now for instance they are each perched in their own papa-san chair, lyli's rolling around on the floor, scarleht's on its base. they are reading outloud to themselves and communicating telepathically with one another (I can tell by their little harmonized chirping). Today I will eat some eggs before using the chainsaw for a half hour or so, then split some wood, go to the post office and hardware store, start digging a new spot for some veggies, clean out the room in the barn and begin setting up a small print shop, take out the garbage, clean the girl's room, put books online, care for my girls from 3 to 8 or so while Steph goes to work, maybe eat some lunch and take a quick nap in there considering I got up at 5 today and then hopefully relax with a beer and finish reading What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, one of the greatest short story writers to ever live and one of my persoanl heroes (although in my current emotional state I'm not sure if that's necessarily a good thing, sorry Ray).
Steph and my's turmoil continues, again boiling over. our tempers flare and mix and neither one of us likes the results. first we decide to have separate rooms, then that we will look at houses in olympia, then that maybe we shouldn't live together after all... then we say some really good things and I don't know what of it all to believe. I don't want to leave this place but my love does.
How does one ask love to stay? Or does one love love enough to wish her wings to fly away?
just got three more old printing presses yesterday, little ones. maybe the words i find inside will be able to console my lonely heart whilst we figure out what to do about any old thing at all.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Anarcha-Feminism and Supporting Mothers and Children
Please check out my friend China's pamphlet [in .pdf] from her recent workshop:
Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Anarcha-Feminism and Supporting Mothers and Children
China started one of the first mamazines back in the day, The Future Generation, go google her or keyword search this blog for past postings.
Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Anarcha-Feminism and Supporting Mothers and Children
China started one of the first mamazines back in the day, The Future Generation, go google her or keyword search this blog for past postings.
Sunday, April 9, 2006
too much to list this past week in Walla Walla where I go eternally searching for my lost youth.
lyli and scarleht now say:
"here ya go!"
"pillow, pellow, pI-llow" - for this one lyli's tongue nearly touches her nose
"gramma" "gran-papa" (although Gramma tends to mean either depending on context)
my mother has been signing up a storm with them as well as sent me packing with three American Sign Language videos to pore over in all my spare time (read 3a.m.).
my father plays with them in the mornings, reading books and laughing, the wrinkles around the corners of his eyes sketching out my future. he is so tired when he gets home at night from the store. I worry about both my parents.
My parents have been watching them together and alone for a bit here and there while I go work at my pop's bookstore and run errands and get out to try to breathe or write or search some soul or have a cold beer and look for faces I used to know around the foreign bars, alienated within my own eggshell. Willow, the old gray cat of my childhood is withering; she has now lost control of her bowels and stays outside most of the time. Her meow is quite loud and grating as she can no longer hear what it sounds like in order to fine tune a few things. Rascal, my old Australian shepherd is dead and her enormous offspring Brando is too clumsy and lick-crazy around the girls to be any fun for them. They just stare at him and then cry if he comes near. Oh well, maybe next time.
I do the dance, wine tasting, girls downtown, stares, stopping every other person to allow gawking at such magnificent beauty (the girls too I'm sure). Surely the goddess Diana came down and kissed the eyelids of these two 'cause I've never been that beautiful in my life and Stephanie is beautiful but in a different way. Anyway... the Walla Walla social dance I dip my toe into and shudder at. I enjoy ending sentences with prepositions. Ha! I got a C on one grammar test and Ds and Fs on all the others and I'm a writer.
But seriously, how broke back mountain is it to cliche yourself to death in a small town when you could be working to foster an egalitarian sustainable organic biodiesel biodiesel biodiesel community? I digress.
I guess.
I am enchanted by wheat. John and I drive through the fields, twins asleep in the rear, snoring. We continue a wide-ranging philosophical conversation that has swelled over a couple days and will continue for a few more. We touch on romantic love, sense of place, literary criticism, current events, old yarns, highschool sexcapades, those worthless carcasses of testosterone and booze we used to drag around the haybales milking the system for all we could and giving back insolence and sometimes art. Now we know our folly and call it blind vanity but move on selfishly anyway despite this knowledge. We eat a torta and a Mexican fish I think is called Tilapa(?) Time achieves this brilliant haze it always has for me with him, an incandescence blurs the edges of my vision and consciousness, thoughts becoming tangible, concretions merging into vague conceptions, doors opening, dream-petals unfolding. The wonder of a friendship without possibility of failure, the endless kind that authors sometimes try to capture in 7oo page novels that have to be translated into English for our monolingual dumbtongues. I revel in the bliss of intelligent banter. Too often it seems my tongue is tied to trivial, menial matters and details which do not deserve my attention. I believe that the little shit works itself out as long as you know how to pull the strings.
Stephanie misses the girls terribly. They talk about her 6 to 12 times a day. It is sad and amazing to experience such things.
Today we went to visit Phyllis and Bob Pulfer, John's grandparents. Phyllis used to be the head of the Democratic Party for the state of Washington, she's been on the Human Rights Commission, she's spearheaded hundreds of projects locally and nationally and is now in her late seventies or early eighties (?) and has been blind for many years. She is also the mother of twins, John's mother being one of them. She and Bob had four kids and then had twins (that's right, and you think one or two are hard). We talked about parenting and kids and trains and magnets and I tried to explain to Phyllis some of the ASL signs the girls know. I was trying to tell her how to sign take turns: you make an L with the index finger and thumb of your right hand and then flip it over from palm up to palm down, your thumb indicating two options and your index finger pointing straight forward. But Phyllis, it was obvious to me, couldn't remember what the letter L looked like! So I re-explained it as a kid imitating a toy gun with her hand and she locked on target just fine. Then she placed her hands over mine and felt while I signed and I guided her hands into the proper shapes. It was quite amazing. I can't stop thinking about Helen Keller and language acquisition and synapses and shit. Whew.
God, what else? Just sealed a deal to get three table-top printing presses. My friend Jade is our intern at the bookstore this quarter to get our old Chandler and Price press up and running. The site is just beginning but tune in to Ampersand Printing soon to get a glimpse of this clandestine undertaking / artistic endeavor / fledgling business. Should be fun times ahead.
Troubleshooting my father's new laptop, picked out a nice digital camera for him while we were here. I'm jealous, now he's got a nicer camera and a nicer computer than we do. We're gonna have to upgrade again.
Tomorrow afternoon we will rent a big ass car, hopefully not that fucking Yukon again. Horrible gas mileage and I end up driving 85 miles per hour 'cause it feels like 35. God people are morons. Perhaps we will dine in Yakima or at that little trout place on White Pass... time will tell. Definitely gonna hit the taco bus on the way out of town. Maybe get some onions. mmmmmm. onions. Thanks for tuning in. Sorry I didn't post anything for a bit. Leave more comments and I will!
"here ya go!"
"pillow, pellow, pI-llow" - for this one lyli's tongue nearly touches her nose
"gramma" "gran-papa" (although Gramma tends to mean either depending on context)
my mother has been signing up a storm with them as well as sent me packing with three American Sign Language videos to pore over in all my spare time (read 3a.m.).
my father plays with them in the mornings, reading books and laughing, the wrinkles around the corners of his eyes sketching out my future. he is so tired when he gets home at night from the store. I worry about both my parents.
My parents have been watching them together and alone for a bit here and there while I go work at my pop's bookstore and run errands and get out to try to breathe or write or search some soul or have a cold beer and look for faces I used to know around the foreign bars, alienated within my own eggshell. Willow, the old gray cat of my childhood is withering; she has now lost control of her bowels and stays outside most of the time. Her meow is quite loud and grating as she can no longer hear what it sounds like in order to fine tune a few things. Rascal, my old Australian shepherd is dead and her enormous offspring Brando is too clumsy and lick-crazy around the girls to be any fun for them. They just stare at him and then cry if he comes near. Oh well, maybe next time.
I do the dance, wine tasting, girls downtown, stares, stopping every other person to allow gawking at such magnificent beauty (the girls too I'm sure). Surely the goddess Diana came down and kissed the eyelids of these two 'cause I've never been that beautiful in my life and Stephanie is beautiful but in a different way. Anyway... the Walla Walla social dance I dip my toe into and shudder at. I enjoy ending sentences with prepositions. Ha! I got a C on one grammar test and Ds and Fs on all the others and I'm a writer.
But seriously, how broke back mountain is it to cliche yourself to death in a small town when you could be working to foster an egalitarian sustainable organic biodiesel biodiesel biodiesel community? I digress.
I guess.
I am enchanted by wheat. John and I drive through the fields, twins asleep in the rear, snoring. We continue a wide-ranging philosophical conversation that has swelled over a couple days and will continue for a few more. We touch on romantic love, sense of place, literary criticism, current events, old yarns, highschool sexcapades, those worthless carcasses of testosterone and booze we used to drag around the haybales milking the system for all we could and giving back insolence and sometimes art. Now we know our folly and call it blind vanity but move on selfishly anyway despite this knowledge. We eat a torta and a Mexican fish I think is called Tilapa(?) Time achieves this brilliant haze it always has for me with him, an incandescence blurs the edges of my vision and consciousness, thoughts becoming tangible, concretions merging into vague conceptions, doors opening, dream-petals unfolding. The wonder of a friendship without possibility of failure, the endless kind that authors sometimes try to capture in 7oo page novels that have to be translated into English for our monolingual dumbtongues. I revel in the bliss of intelligent banter. Too often it seems my tongue is tied to trivial, menial matters and details which do not deserve my attention. I believe that the little shit works itself out as long as you know how to pull the strings.
Stephanie misses the girls terribly. They talk about her 6 to 12 times a day. It is sad and amazing to experience such things.
Today we went to visit Phyllis and Bob Pulfer, John's grandparents. Phyllis used to be the head of the Democratic Party for the state of Washington, she's been on the Human Rights Commission, she's spearheaded hundreds of projects locally and nationally and is now in her late seventies or early eighties (?) and has been blind for many years. She is also the mother of twins, John's mother being one of them. She and Bob had four kids and then had twins (that's right, and you think one or two are hard). We talked about parenting and kids and trains and magnets and I tried to explain to Phyllis some of the ASL signs the girls know. I was trying to tell her how to sign take turns: you make an L with the index finger and thumb of your right hand and then flip it over from palm up to palm down, your thumb indicating two options and your index finger pointing straight forward. But Phyllis, it was obvious to me, couldn't remember what the letter L looked like! So I re-explained it as a kid imitating a toy gun with her hand and she locked on target just fine. Then she placed her hands over mine and felt while I signed and I guided her hands into the proper shapes. It was quite amazing. I can't stop thinking about Helen Keller and language acquisition and synapses and shit. Whew.
God, what else? Just sealed a deal to get three table-top printing presses. My friend Jade is our intern at the bookstore this quarter to get our old Chandler and Price press up and running. The site is just beginning but tune in to Ampersand Printing soon to get a glimpse of this clandestine undertaking / artistic endeavor / fledgling business. Should be fun times ahead.
Troubleshooting my father's new laptop, picked out a nice digital camera for him while we were here. I'm jealous, now he's got a nicer camera and a nicer computer than we do. We're gonna have to upgrade again.
Tomorrow afternoon we will rent a big ass car, hopefully not that fucking Yukon again. Horrible gas mileage and I end up driving 85 miles per hour 'cause it feels like 35. God people are morons. Perhaps we will dine in Yakima or at that little trout place on White Pass... time will tell. Definitely gonna hit the taco bus on the way out of town. Maybe get some onions. mmmmmm. onions. Thanks for tuning in. Sorry I didn't post anything for a bit. Leave more comments and I will!
Monday, March 27, 2006
Rad Dad #3 is out!
My cyber buddy and fellow pirate papa Tomas down in Berkeley just got the 3rd installment of Rad Dad printed! Shoot him off an e-mail and he'll tell you how to order some copies to distribute in your community. Ideally getting more physical papa zines such as this one out there in circulation will eventually influence more and more fathers to talk about their lives openly and begin to help heal the disconnect we're all feeling.
tom_moniz(at)riseup.net
tom_moniz(at)riseup.net
Thursday, March 23, 2006
My daughters make faint marks in their little collaged scrap paper art books from auntie Em
outside the roosters crow in the gray of day
as little shoots inch their way up into this March light
in little planters filling our laundry room
fir crackles in the wood stove
pitch spitting in defiance of combustion
Lyli wobbles around the living room chanting 'appy 'appy
scarleht signs hurt by touching her index fingers together several times
as we discuss last night's hair combing adventure
we work on signing 'today' 'tomorrow' and 'yesterday' as I explain to them
that time does not have to be linear
take me for example, to whom time has become a folded sheet I sometimes shake the dust from
Our children's development mirrors Stephanie and my difficulties in ways which are hard to explain. As our daughters learn to speak it is as if Stephanie and my ability to do so has devolved, hopefully only temporarily. Perhaps we have gifted those energies in our own beings to our girls to quench their aching thirst. In this transition time before spoken language takes off like a jumbo jet it often feels at the end of a day spent mostly teaching them to talk, it often feels as if my faculties of thought and patience have dried up, expended and withered against their absurd sponge-like enthusiasm and boundless energy. Maybe I've just lost the ability to interact with anyone beyond drunks and small children... which still leaves a lot of people to talk to at least.
But mostly around adults I just feel tired and out of place, as if the cumulative weight of their years oppresses me somehow. At the same time add to this mix a bit of youthful idealism and energetic pride to be doing all that I am doing so young, to garner the respect of this tired old club dreaming down dead-end streets.
Around those my own age I still feel that same anachronistic awkwardness... having grown in ways unbeknownst to my peers but also having a piece of my own growth stunted, those few limbs which shoot for the sky before they know not to try, that reckless selfish coming to terms with ones fantasies and fictions before sitting down to tell a tale.
as little shoots inch their way up into this March light
in little planters filling our laundry room
fir crackles in the wood stove
pitch spitting in defiance of combustion
Lyli wobbles around the living room chanting 'appy 'appy
scarleht signs hurt by touching her index fingers together several times
as we discuss last night's hair combing adventure
we work on signing 'today' 'tomorrow' and 'yesterday' as I explain to them
that time does not have to be linear
take me for example, to whom time has become a folded sheet I sometimes shake the dust from
Our children's development mirrors Stephanie and my difficulties in ways which are hard to explain. As our daughters learn to speak it is as if Stephanie and my ability to do so has devolved, hopefully only temporarily. Perhaps we have gifted those energies in our own beings to our girls to quench their aching thirst. In this transition time before spoken language takes off like a jumbo jet it often feels at the end of a day spent mostly teaching them to talk, it often feels as if my faculties of thought and patience have dried up, expended and withered against their absurd sponge-like enthusiasm and boundless energy. Maybe I've just lost the ability to interact with anyone beyond drunks and small children... which still leaves a lot of people to talk to at least.
But mostly around adults I just feel tired and out of place, as if the cumulative weight of their years oppresses me somehow. At the same time add to this mix a bit of youthful idealism and energetic pride to be doing all that I am doing so young, to garner the respect of this tired old club dreaming down dead-end streets.
Around those my own age I still feel that same anachronistic awkwardness... having grown in ways unbeknownst to my peers but also having a piece of my own growth stunted, those few limbs which shoot for the sky before they know not to try, that reckless selfish coming to terms with ones fantasies and fictions before sitting down to tell a tale.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
the concept of two, tools and talk of an injury
four days old now: Scarleht backed into the door of the wood stove boomshika first and has a nice oval slightly larger than a silver dollar burned into her left 'shika-cheek. Over the past few days she has started showing more interest in the hand signs for today, yesterday and tomorrow in association with the pain she is feeling and her memories of the event itself. very interesting. she and lyli also said 'two' today in reference to their socks and appeared to fully understand the difference between one and two of something for close to the first time (other than knowing that there are two of them). Steph brought home a toy shovel and rake so that the ladies may join us working in the garden together tomorrow.
twenty-two months on April 1st, hard for me to believe that almost two years have gone by since my daughters entered this world. i wonder where some parts of me have gone this past span of time's trail. figured out today that when my girls turn 34 months old my father's bookstore will be 34 years old... just another strange coincidental bit of synchronicity to help tell me subliminally that I am on the right path.
twenty-two months on April 1st, hard for me to believe that almost two years have gone by since my daughters entered this world. i wonder where some parts of me have gone this past span of time's trail. figured out today that when my girls turn 34 months old my father's bookstore will be 34 years old... just another strange coincidental bit of synchronicity to help tell me subliminally that I am on the right path.
Friday, March 17, 2006
The words just keep flowing
out of Lyli and Scarleht as their ability to mimic noises improves exponentially every few days. Today's new or newly enunciated words: Diapie, yodel, Rob(Rah), Uncle(Unck), Sock (zzjah), hi (Hieeeee!), Moon (Mao), Raw (as in foods). I've started perusing How Language Comes to Children by Benedicte de Boysson-Bardies who is a director of research in the Experimental Psychology Laboratory at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, France. Wish I had time to give it a solid read, sigh. For a change of pace I've picked up Andre Gide's The Immoralist and am still slowly plowing through A Book of Readings for Men Against Sexism published by those pioneers at Times Change Press back in 1977.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
i assert that our primary partnerships are the key to family success,
and even though arrangements don't all have to look the same, i am of the belief that the overall health and stability of that main bond in our lives as papas is essential. i am curious what you might have gone through/are going through in your primary relationship that has you concerned/hopeful etc. much of my relationship work i wear on my sleeves, because that is my magnum opus in my life at this time.
i am interested in what other papas are experiencing when it comes to maintaining a healthy partnership. what do you know about successes in polyamourous relationships with kids involved? what are papas most common triggers around jealousy/loss/security concerning our partners? where does getting our intimate needs met intersect family life, and busy young families? do you play footsie in the middle of the night, only to find that you wake up the 3 year old? does your partner seem like they have nothing left for you after burping babies, and doing poopy diaper laundry all day? is this true also for stay at home papas? if you are a new papa, how are you sleeping? how are you solving love life issues, and what are they?
-Erik of Radical Shift brings up a few solid questions. I think it is important that, as fathers, we learn to continually question our own feelings and thoughts and share ideas with each other in order to escape the patriarchal power dynamics that have pushed our world in poor directions. I am just learning how to do this sort of thing myself, not to mention trying to talk to others about it, shit, it's hard enough to just have these thoughts alone. As for your questions, the only thing I know about polyamorous relationships is that they end up hurting more than just two people. Not that I find monogamy any more appealing... I'm actually dredging up my childhood love of the whole monk-in-high-snows/hermit-in-deep-woods lifestyle. Your other questions require more deliberation. - Sky
*Read more about Erik's alternative relationship building exdeavors:
I have an amazing new friend
i am interested in what other papas are experiencing when it comes to maintaining a healthy partnership. what do you know about successes in polyamourous relationships with kids involved? what are papas most common triggers around jealousy/loss/security concerning our partners? where does getting our intimate needs met intersect family life, and busy young families? do you play footsie in the middle of the night, only to find that you wake up the 3 year old? does your partner seem like they have nothing left for you after burping babies, and doing poopy diaper laundry all day? is this true also for stay at home papas? if you are a new papa, how are you sleeping? how are you solving love life issues, and what are they?
-Erik of Radical Shift brings up a few solid questions. I think it is important that, as fathers, we learn to continually question our own feelings and thoughts and share ideas with each other in order to escape the patriarchal power dynamics that have pushed our world in poor directions. I am just learning how to do this sort of thing myself, not to mention trying to talk to others about it, shit, it's hard enough to just have these thoughts alone. As for your questions, the only thing I know about polyamorous relationships is that they end up hurting more than just two people. Not that I find monogamy any more appealing... I'm actually dredging up my childhood love of the whole monk-in-high-snows/hermit-in-deep-woods lifestyle. Your other questions require more deliberation. - Sky
*Read more about Erik's alternative relationship building exdeavors:
I have an amazing new friend
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
A few new links and a black hole
Slowlane - The Online Resource for Stay-At-Home Dads Mediocre but some solid info, including a nice links page of stay-at-home dads all across the country.
Daddy Stays At Home
Mother Anarchy - An excellent mama blogging the parental countersphere
Rice Daddies - Great Asian Papa Blog!
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Monday, March 13, 2006
PIPPIN - Investing in Fathers UK Project
Why doesn't big brother launch something like this? Could it be that they're afraid of the societal changes that will occur if men start unbecoming or god-forbid, stay home with the kids and do all the housework? Why the walls would just come tumbling down! Leave it to the Brits to one-up us once again on common sense.
The aim of the PIPPIN (Parents in Partnership Parent Infant Network) ‘Investing in Fathers’ project (a three year project funded by the Home Office Family Support Unit) was to create the right environment for supporting young fathers. We want to achieve this by really listening to young fathers.
PIPPIN is a national charity whose main aim is to maintain and improve the emotional health of families through one of the most critical stages in their lives - the period surrounding the birth of a new baby.
Few fathers attend conventional parent craft classes, and those that do frequently feel out of place.
PIPPIN programmes welcome fathers as a vital element in the new family, and those that attend are helped to feel very much at home.
To date our courses have been designed to support couples; to help both parents understand and communicate better with their baby and between themselves.
Ensuring that fathers become more confident, more involved, less isolated and excluded, `Investing in Fathers` adds an important new dimension to Pippin's work.
`Investing in Fathers` is a project funded in 1999 by the Family Policy Unit for three years, and to be active in seven counties within that time.
The aim of `Investing in Fathers` was to find out what it is really like to be a young father (under 25 years) who is not living with his partner or baby, once we have found that out we need to find the best way of supporting young fathers through the pregnancy, birth and the first few months of fatherhood.
Preliminary findings from the 'Investing in Fathers`project are available on request by calling our office on 01727 899099 or by email from colleen@pippin.org.uk
________________________
All too often young fathers, simply because of their age fade away into the background. They tend to be an `invisible` group, receiving little encouragement or acknowledgement by others.
Society often sees young fathers in a negative light; they feel undervalued, disregarded, excluded.
Not surprisingly, they often react by withdrawing, losing self-esteem and confidence and as we have mentioned already, this is a similar reaction other fathers have within this transition into fatherhood.
It may be more extreme than other fathers, and many young fathers play the uncaring, uncommitted role, which society seem to cast them in.
`Investing in Fathers` also recognises there are many men, young men included who become ` serial fathers`, that is men who have short relationships where the girl/women becomes pregnant, the relationship ends, he moves on to the next relationship. These men need support from a different source.
There is another type of young father however, who we recognise wants to be there for his partner and baby, who wants to be a father for the `longer term` to `stay the distance`, yet he cannot for whatever reason live with them.
Our research suggests that:
• Many young fathers want to become involved with their children right from the start, rather than waiting until the child is older.
• Many young fathers are denied access to their baby for reasons such as personal relationships with partners and families.
• Many young men find the transition to fatherhood confusing, they lack clear information and support from family and professionals, and this increases their sense of alienation from their baby.
Many young fathers are teenagers and continue to deal with the effects of the process of becoming a man, a natural process that is confusing in itself.
At this time the body is flooded with the hormone testosterone causing many changes, preparing for the change from boyhood into manhood, which includes his feelings about many things, especially about sexuality and relationships.
There is a national and international drive to support and recognise fathers of all ages, they play a major part in the future generation, you and your children's generation.
The aim of the PIPPIN (Parents in Partnership Parent Infant Network) ‘Investing in Fathers’ project (a three year project funded by the Home Office Family Support Unit) was to create the right environment for supporting young fathers. We want to achieve this by really listening to young fathers.
PIPPIN is a national charity whose main aim is to maintain and improve the emotional health of families through one of the most critical stages in their lives - the period surrounding the birth of a new baby.
Few fathers attend conventional parent craft classes, and those that do frequently feel out of place.
PIPPIN programmes welcome fathers as a vital element in the new family, and those that attend are helped to feel very much at home.
To date our courses have been designed to support couples; to help both parents understand and communicate better with their baby and between themselves.
Ensuring that fathers become more confident, more involved, less isolated and excluded, `Investing in Fathers` adds an important new dimension to Pippin's work.
`Investing in Fathers` is a project funded in 1999 by the Family Policy Unit for three years, and to be active in seven counties within that time.
The aim of `Investing in Fathers` was to find out what it is really like to be a young father (under 25 years) who is not living with his partner or baby, once we have found that out we need to find the best way of supporting young fathers through the pregnancy, birth and the first few months of fatherhood.
Preliminary findings from the 'Investing in Fathers`project are available on request by calling our office on 01727 899099 or by email from colleen@pippin.org.uk
________________________
All too often young fathers, simply because of their age fade away into the background. They tend to be an `invisible` group, receiving little encouragement or acknowledgement by others.
Society often sees young fathers in a negative light; they feel undervalued, disregarded, excluded.
Not surprisingly, they often react by withdrawing, losing self-esteem and confidence and as we have mentioned already, this is a similar reaction other fathers have within this transition into fatherhood.
It may be more extreme than other fathers, and many young fathers play the uncaring, uncommitted role, which society seem to cast them in.
`Investing in Fathers` also recognises there are many men, young men included who become ` serial fathers`, that is men who have short relationships where the girl/women becomes pregnant, the relationship ends, he moves on to the next relationship. These men need support from a different source.
There is another type of young father however, who we recognise wants to be there for his partner and baby, who wants to be a father for the `longer term` to `stay the distance`, yet he cannot for whatever reason live with them.
Our research suggests that:
• Many young fathers want to become involved with their children right from the start, rather than waiting until the child is older.
• Many young fathers are denied access to their baby for reasons such as personal relationships with partners and families.
• Many young men find the transition to fatherhood confusing, they lack clear information and support from family and professionals, and this increases their sense of alienation from their baby.
Many young fathers are teenagers and continue to deal with the effects of the process of becoming a man, a natural process that is confusing in itself.
At this time the body is flooded with the hormone testosterone causing many changes, preparing for the change from boyhood into manhood, which includes his feelings about many things, especially about sexuality and relationships.
There is a national and international drive to support and recognise fathers of all ages, they play a major part in the future generation, you and your children's generation.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Real Anarchists Don't Breed
I don't agree with most of this article but it's an interesting perspective and one I'm getting sick of hearing half-assedly espoused so I thought I'd chuck this up here so we can dissect it, digest it and spit it back out as some better assemblage of ideas for the future.
Brought to you by the interesting wackos at the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
By Les U. Knight
We anarchists have many reasons to avoid procreation today. Our redundant breeding feeds the very forces we are trying to counter, and prevents us from living as freely as we might.
Capitalism is dependent on a growing population and an expendable work force. Labor gains power when the need for workers is higher. As demands for supplies are reduced, and markets cease to grow, economic changes we aspire toward will more easily be achieved. Sustainable economic systems could replace out-dated "slash and burn" methods when consumers are fewer in number.
Society's institutions are dependent on our producing families. Churches, schools, and social services, all need fresh supplies of human bodies to exist.
Business applauds births. As if to celebrate each new North American life, a multi-passenger vehicle rolls off the assembly line to join it.
Anarchists generally oppose the culture of work, production and consumption. Breeding increases participation in these institutions. Workers with children are more dependent on their jobs and less likely to strike. Anarchists take risks which parents can't.
Thinking about not producing more offspring is difficult for most of us. It's a freedom that we guard fiercely, even though, with the exception of China's government, no one is trying to take it away. The establishment is certainly not trying to talk us out of reproducing. Governments have traditionally been natalist and often subsidize procreation. Disorganized masses are easier to control than small unified groups.
If each of us produces one less pupil for the schools, one less soldier for the military, one less wage slave for industrial exploitation, one less consumer, and one less pawn in the government subsistence trap, we will help the old system fall. And when it does fall, it won't be landing on any children we chose not to create.
Anarchy includes taking responsibility for our own lives. Creating a dependent which "takes a village" to raise, forces others to share responsibility for a couple's free choice. Breeding. especially insisting on extra services for breeding, shirks personal responsibility.
Anarchists eschew hierarchy, favoring interactions among equals. Parent-child relationships are hierarchical, not consensual. Children don't choose to be born, but parents do choose to breed. Creating a dependent child also creates an authority figure for many years. Couples who breed "accidentally," have not taken responsibility for their fertility.
Anarchists and environmentalists understand the biosphere is in danger, and that six billion of us is far too many. Taking personal responsibility, we eschew breeding for the sake of both humankind and the Earth. Earth's biosphere will benefit as every demand humans place on Nature is reduced. Human society will benefit from an improved birth rate, as shortages of food, housing, and resources are potentially lessened. Existing children could be better cared for in the coming weird times if there are fewer of them. By not breeding, we'll have more time and energy for promoting social change.
Anarchists seek neither security nor stability, understanding these states of illusion are not compatible with real social change. Parents seek both security and stability, for the sake of their children. Good parents make bad anarchists.
When thinking about improving our density, many see death as the only means of achieving it. Actually, death has had little effect on global population. A million deaths are compensated for in less than a week. High death rates cause high birth rates.
Giving up the fantasy of raising children which are biologically ours can feel like a major sacrifice to many people. However, if we are willing to risk our social status, jobs, and sometimes our freedom, surely we can consider giving up something that doesn't exist yet.
Some say we need to breed more anarchists, but how many of us come from anarchist parents? You cannot make someone an anarchist: it's up to them to decide. We'll likely have more luck influencing other people's children. Anyway, this would be expecting our children to do what we should be doing, with a 15 to 20 year delay. Anarchy happens right now, if we choose it.
Voluntarily choosing to not add another human to the existing billions is the greatest gift we can give the planet and the most severe blow we can strike against the New World Order.
Real anarchists don't breed.
Fascism and Anarchy: Our Density Factor
One major factor limiting our freedom often gets ignored: the sheer number of us sharing a space.
As the number of people living together increases, restrictions on activities must increase for the sake of fairness and order.
The number of possible interactions determines the level of anarchy possible, or the degree of fascism necessary to maintain order.*
When we live alone, few if any rules are required. Peaceful anarchy reigns. With two, simple agreements are sufficient. However, when more than a few share a kitchen and bathroom, some well-defined rules must be established and adhered to -- voluntarily or not.
This is also true on a larger scale. Archeological evidence from around the globe and throughout our existence reveals that the lower a society's population density, the more equally members are treated. As egalitarian tribes grow into chiefdoms, hierarchies develop. Cities evolve into empires, subjugating more and more people, enlarging the gap between top and bottom.
As our density increases, regulations are becoming more plentiful and more strictly enforced. In denser areas, we can't even cross the street until a signal light gives permission.
China has about the same land mass as the United States and four times the population. Their society has to be more than four times as repressive just to keep order.
A future of peace and freedom in a more equal society may be possible if enough of us accept responsibility for our growing numbers, and voluntarily avoid adding more of us.
*Formula for finding number of interactions: n(n-1) over 2. n = number of people. As n increases arithmetically, the number of interactions increases exponentially, as does the need for control.
Natalism vs. Freedom
Out of the mouths of babes come some of society's strongest indoctrinations.
First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes (your name here),
With a baby carriage
Maybe if we question everything we learned in kindergarten, we'll get to the roots of all that prevents an anarchistic society from emerging.
Procreation automatically entangles us in government bureaucracy. That fresh social security number is only the beginning. Required immunizations, mandatory education, and suspicion of child abuse or neglect may be used as excuses for interfering with our lives.
Fear of our children revealing confidential information at school may restrict our freedoms at home.
"One child can raze a whole village." ~Anon
Brought to you by the interesting wackos at the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
By Les U. KnightWe anarchists have many reasons to avoid procreation today. Our redundant breeding feeds the very forces we are trying to counter, and prevents us from living as freely as we might.
Capitalism is dependent on a growing population and an expendable work force. Labor gains power when the need for workers is higher. As demands for supplies are reduced, and markets cease to grow, economic changes we aspire toward will more easily be achieved. Sustainable economic systems could replace out-dated "slash and burn" methods when consumers are fewer in number.
Society's institutions are dependent on our producing families. Churches, schools, and social services, all need fresh supplies of human bodies to exist.
Business applauds births. As if to celebrate each new North American life, a multi-passenger vehicle rolls off the assembly line to join it.
Anarchists generally oppose the culture of work, production and consumption. Breeding increases participation in these institutions. Workers with children are more dependent on their jobs and less likely to strike. Anarchists take risks which parents can't.
Thinking about not producing more offspring is difficult for most of us. It's a freedom that we guard fiercely, even though, with the exception of China's government, no one is trying to take it away. The establishment is certainly not trying to talk us out of reproducing. Governments have traditionally been natalist and often subsidize procreation. Disorganized masses are easier to control than small unified groups.
If each of us produces one less pupil for the schools, one less soldier for the military, one less wage slave for industrial exploitation, one less consumer, and one less pawn in the government subsistence trap, we will help the old system fall. And when it does fall, it won't be landing on any children we chose not to create.
Anarchy includes taking responsibility for our own lives. Creating a dependent which "takes a village" to raise, forces others to share responsibility for a couple's free choice. Breeding. especially insisting on extra services for breeding, shirks personal responsibility.
Anarchists eschew hierarchy, favoring interactions among equals. Parent-child relationships are hierarchical, not consensual. Children don't choose to be born, but parents do choose to breed. Creating a dependent child also creates an authority figure for many years. Couples who breed "accidentally," have not taken responsibility for their fertility.
Anarchists and environmentalists understand the biosphere is in danger, and that six billion of us is far too many. Taking personal responsibility, we eschew breeding for the sake of both humankind and the Earth. Earth's biosphere will benefit as every demand humans place on Nature is reduced. Human society will benefit from an improved birth rate, as shortages of food, housing, and resources are potentially lessened. Existing children could be better cared for in the coming weird times if there are fewer of them. By not breeding, we'll have more time and energy for promoting social change.
Anarchists seek neither security nor stability, understanding these states of illusion are not compatible with real social change. Parents seek both security and stability, for the sake of their children. Good parents make bad anarchists.
When thinking about improving our density, many see death as the only means of achieving it. Actually, death has had little effect on global population. A million deaths are compensated for in less than a week. High death rates cause high birth rates.
Giving up the fantasy of raising children which are biologically ours can feel like a major sacrifice to many people. However, if we are willing to risk our social status, jobs, and sometimes our freedom, surely we can consider giving up something that doesn't exist yet.
Some say we need to breed more anarchists, but how many of us come from anarchist parents? You cannot make someone an anarchist: it's up to them to decide. We'll likely have more luck influencing other people's children. Anyway, this would be expecting our children to do what we should be doing, with a 15 to 20 year delay. Anarchy happens right now, if we choose it.
Voluntarily choosing to not add another human to the existing billions is the greatest gift we can give the planet and the most severe blow we can strike against the New World Order.
Real anarchists don't breed.
Fascism and Anarchy: Our Density Factor
One major factor limiting our freedom often gets ignored: the sheer number of us sharing a space.
As the number of people living together increases, restrictions on activities must increase for the sake of fairness and order.
The number of possible interactions determines the level of anarchy possible, or the degree of fascism necessary to maintain order.*
When we live alone, few if any rules are required. Peaceful anarchy reigns. With two, simple agreements are sufficient. However, when more than a few share a kitchen and bathroom, some well-defined rules must be established and adhered to -- voluntarily or not.
This is also true on a larger scale. Archeological evidence from around the globe and throughout our existence reveals that the lower a society's population density, the more equally members are treated. As egalitarian tribes grow into chiefdoms, hierarchies develop. Cities evolve into empires, subjugating more and more people, enlarging the gap between top and bottom.
As our density increases, regulations are becoming more plentiful and more strictly enforced. In denser areas, we can't even cross the street until a signal light gives permission.
China has about the same land mass as the United States and four times the population. Their society has to be more than four times as repressive just to keep order.
A future of peace and freedom in a more equal society may be possible if enough of us accept responsibility for our growing numbers, and voluntarily avoid adding more of us.
*Formula for finding number of interactions: n(n-1) over 2. n = number of people. As n increases arithmetically, the number of interactions increases exponentially, as does the need for control.
Natalism vs. Freedom
Out of the mouths of babes come some of society's strongest indoctrinations.
First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes (your name here),
With a baby carriage
Maybe if we question everything we learned in kindergarten, we'll get to the roots of all that prevents an anarchistic society from emerging.
Procreation automatically entangles us in government bureaucracy. That fresh social security number is only the beginning. Required immunizations, mandatory education, and suspicion of child abuse or neglect may be used as excuses for interfering with our lives.
Fear of our children revealing confidential information at school may restrict our freedoms at home.
"One child can raze a whole village." ~Anon
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Parenting for Youth Liberation
an interview With Cynthia Peters
By Tim Allen
How can parents behave in a non-oppressive way?
There is no getting around -- nor should there be -- the fact that parents have a lot of power over children. We exercise the greatest power of all, which is deciding to bring children into the world, or, as in the case of adoption, deciding to bring children into our families. Once I bring a child into my family, I continue to exercise a lot of power over her. I decide where she will live, what her name will be, who she will live with, whether she will have siblings, which community subcultures she will experience, what language she will speak, what she will eat, how often she gets a bath, and how much she will be held.
Not all of this power emanates directly from me. I am influenced by other institutions in society. My salary will help determine where I live, and therefore what community I raise my kid in, for example. How I was raised will affect how I raise my own child. My access to privilege or my sense of what my child can expect from the world will affect what I communicate to her about what she should expect. Etc.
So, as a parent, I experience many social and economic and cultural pressures which significantly affect the options I can make available to my child, her opportunities, and values. Making these institutions less oppressive is probably the single most important thing we could do to influence parents to be less oppressive towards their children.
For example, removing the stress of poverty and of living in a culture that emphasizes marketplace values would liberate parents and children to create families outside the confines of financial concerns. When my daughter breaks her arm, my first thought should be concern for her well-being, not dread at how much it will cost and anxiety about how to get time off from work in order to fit in all the Dr.'s appointments. It would be nice for parents and children if we could significantly reduce the amount of time we spend negotiating the pressure to buy Disney products, conform to Disney values, and consume various forms of instant gratification. Parents would be less oppressive with children if they did not have to pass on oppressive behaviors that come with living in violent neighborhoods, near toxic landfills, and in poorly designed cities and suburbs that create overcrowding and/or isolation rather than community...Read More...
By Tim Allen
How can parents behave in a non-oppressive way?
There is no getting around -- nor should there be -- the fact that parents have a lot of power over children. We exercise the greatest power of all, which is deciding to bring children into the world, or, as in the case of adoption, deciding to bring children into our families. Once I bring a child into my family, I continue to exercise a lot of power over her. I decide where she will live, what her name will be, who she will live with, whether she will have siblings, which community subcultures she will experience, what language she will speak, what she will eat, how often she gets a bath, and how much she will be held.
Not all of this power emanates directly from me. I am influenced by other institutions in society. My salary will help determine where I live, and therefore what community I raise my kid in, for example. How I was raised will affect how I raise my own child. My access to privilege or my sense of what my child can expect from the world will affect what I communicate to her about what she should expect. Etc.
So, as a parent, I experience many social and economic and cultural pressures which significantly affect the options I can make available to my child, her opportunities, and values. Making these institutions less oppressive is probably the single most important thing we could do to influence parents to be less oppressive towards their children.
For example, removing the stress of poverty and of living in a culture that emphasizes marketplace values would liberate parents and children to create families outside the confines of financial concerns. When my daughter breaks her arm, my first thought should be concern for her well-being, not dread at how much it will cost and anxiety about how to get time off from work in order to fit in all the Dr.'s appointments. It would be nice for parents and children if we could significantly reduce the amount of time we spend negotiating the pressure to buy Disney products, conform to Disney values, and consume various forms of instant gratification. Parents would be less oppressive with children if they did not have to pass on oppressive behaviors that come with living in violent neighborhoods, near toxic landfills, and in poorly designed cities and suburbs that create overcrowding and/or isolation rather than community...Read More...
Friday, March 10, 2006
Transformation - A Radical Shift
From my friend Erik's papa (& other stuff) blog.
There is a dynamic in my primary relationship in which a seemingly normal conversation begins to erode into angry fencing.
What i know is my own experience. I begin to feel defensive. My blood pressure must rise, because my skin feels a little tight, and hot, and i get a prickly sensation. I feel attacked. Most times that i feel attacked, i really am being told that in one way or another i am the problem.
my intention is not usually to further complicate the situation, but i suppose that my next move is to stand up for myself, and point out the unfairness of the statement. but by this point, i am in defense mode, and am not thinking clearly. all the blood in my head is being forced into the reptilian part of my brain.
what i really need is not the cognitive, intellectual conversation, but the calm down, and hold hands. i need reassurance to bolster me in my insecurity. when i feel at odds with my partner, i need to sit quietly together, and old hands. if i rush to solve problems through thinking, and talking, i make rash statements, and further entrench myself in verbal warfare.
"talking it out" isn't always the most productive activity for me.
There is a dynamic in my primary relationship in which a seemingly normal conversation begins to erode into angry fencing.
What i know is my own experience. I begin to feel defensive. My blood pressure must rise, because my skin feels a little tight, and hot, and i get a prickly sensation. I feel attacked. Most times that i feel attacked, i really am being told that in one way or another i am the problem.
my intention is not usually to further complicate the situation, but i suppose that my next move is to stand up for myself, and point out the unfairness of the statement. but by this point, i am in defense mode, and am not thinking clearly. all the blood in my head is being forced into the reptilian part of my brain.
what i really need is not the cognitive, intellectual conversation, but the calm down, and hold hands. i need reassurance to bolster me in my insecurity. when i feel at odds with my partner, i need to sit quietly together, and old hands. if i rush to solve problems through thinking, and talking, i make rash statements, and further entrench myself in verbal warfare.
"talking it out" isn't always the most productive activity for me.
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
New Links on Pirate Papa!
Found a plethora of new sites for your perusal. The new links are right where they damn well belong in the column to your right. Let me know what you think! A few choice sites include:
Rebel Dad: A Father Puts the Stay-At-Home Dad Trend Under the Microscope.
Rude Cactus- An excellent blog by a father, not specifically a father-blog per se but solid.
Being Daddy- No longer in service, but the archives are fantastic.
Rebel Dad: A Father Puts the Stay-At-Home Dad Trend Under the Microscope.
Rude Cactus- An excellent blog by a father, not specifically a father-blog per se but solid.
Being Daddy- No longer in service, but the archives are fantastic.
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Scarleht is running now, no doubt about it. Lyli looks into my voice recorder and says 'Gallut' for 'Scarleht' - they'll both say that but neither will say Lyli as of yet. Lyli manages to squeak out the 'li' part after she says 'Gallut' sometimes. Other new words: door, up, dradle, go, apple, shoe (as of 10 seconds ago when I asked). Potty is becoming more distinctive, 'manima' remains the catch-all possesive, chicken and sister still sound exactly alike. In the last few days both Scarleht and Lyli have started using the word 'No' for what it is intended for occasionally, rather than their happy little no dance of the past week and a half.
The sponge that is their little language acquisition portion of their brain is going great guns right now. What little bits my distracted sense of attention notices blow me out of the water. I hear them try to say at least 20 new words a day and work on perfecting the words from the day before. I have been trying to instill a sense of time through signs these past few days, having learned the signs for today, yesterday and tomorrow. Soon I will begin using a voice recorder and our polaroid camera to make a little guided tour of the past week that we can sit down and go over and talk about. I really enjoy asking Lyli and Scarleht what they remember from the past. The other day Scarleht came up and smelled my coffee and I almost lost it. Six months ago (maybe more) she wanted a drink of my coffee and I said no but I added that she could smell it if she wanted. I haven't been drinking much coffee for the past year or so and so it didn't come up again. But the other day we were selling books at Evergreen and my friend brought me a cup of coffee and sure enough, Scarleht ran right up and leaned over and sniffed very daintily but assuredly. How long do these sensory memories remain in the forefront of their consciousness, I wonder. And when do they begin to fade to make way for the more regimented, delineated and sorted memories and experiences of our lives as we grow older?
The sponge that is their little language acquisition portion of their brain is going great guns right now. What little bits my distracted sense of attention notices blow me out of the water. I hear them try to say at least 20 new words a day and work on perfecting the words from the day before. I have been trying to instill a sense of time through signs these past few days, having learned the signs for today, yesterday and tomorrow. Soon I will begin using a voice recorder and our polaroid camera to make a little guided tour of the past week that we can sit down and go over and talk about. I really enjoy asking Lyli and Scarleht what they remember from the past. The other day Scarleht came up and smelled my coffee and I almost lost it. Six months ago (maybe more) she wanted a drink of my coffee and I said no but I added that she could smell it if she wanted. I haven't been drinking much coffee for the past year or so and so it didn't come up again. But the other day we were selling books at Evergreen and my friend brought me a cup of coffee and sure enough, Scarleht ran right up and leaned over and sniffed very daintily but assuredly. How long do these sensory memories remain in the forefront of their consciousness, I wonder. And when do they begin to fade to make way for the more regimented, delineated and sorted memories and experiences of our lives as we grow older?
Sunday, March 5, 2006
Must Green Parents Be Poor Parents?
Thanks Raj & Miah of Green Parenting! I enjoyed this post so much I excerpted the entire thing! Keep up the excellent work, it's good to be working with folks like you. Please visit Raj and Miah's site and validate them for what they are doing.
When I was twenty-one, much to the dismay of my family and friends, I quit medical school. I had just come back from working on a public health project in the poorest region of Peru. After two months among Quechua-speaking people in little Andean towns like Huascahura and Huayopuqyo, I made the break from medicine, a decision I had long considered but never built up the courage to do. Rather than spend my life focused on a particular disease or set of diseases, I wanted to devote myself to considering, encountering, and changing the way we think about justice, wealth, and living meaningful lives. Instead of studying a protein in a tapeworm, I wanted to ask why the native peoples of Peru didn’t have the kind sewage systems that would eradicate tapeworms? Why are they poor? What is poverty? Why did my life seem less meaningful than the life of a guy who makes less than $2 a day? I thought the writing life would be the best way for me to explore those questions.
The most common response to my decision from family and friends was, “How are you going to pay for your children’s college education?”
Maybe I wouldn’t be able to pay for my child to attend a private school, I thought. Maybe my future child would not want me to sublimate my ideals and desires in order to save up a three hundred thousand dollar college fund. Maybe my child would want a dad who was actualized, took risks, and lived fully. If I made my career choices based on the college-fund concept of parenting, I was worried that I would become too busy and well-paid to be physically and emotionally present. I asked myself, is a childhood good only if it culminates in attending a US top twenty college like Northwestern or Duke?
After quitting medical school, I worked for a year in publishing. Then I went to graduate school for writing and literature. I made about a thousand dollars a month teaching freshman at the University of Houston. My classes were about analyzing the language of advertising, war, colonialism, and trade agreements. I met my wife at that time and she did the same kind of work. I took a semester off to work for a feminist NGO in India. When I got back, Miah and I organized anti-war protests. I felt that I was doing my part in the struggle for global justice. I had to teach myself to live on an extremely tight budget. I bought clothes secondhand, scavenged for used furniture, and cook my own lentils, rice, and vegetables.
As soon as Miah and I started to think about having a baby, my mindset started to change. It’s all fine and good to subject yourself to poverty, but doing so to your children is another matter. Accumulating wealth is essential to weathering the big shocks that life inevitably throws at a family like illness, natural disasters, losing your livelihood, or whatever other unspeakable things. We don’t live in a country with a decent safety net. I absolutely don’t want anyone in my family to go through the humiliation and forced poverty of Medicaid, disability, or what’s left of welfare. Forget an Ivy League education without debt, what if we can’t even afford to help our child obtain a decent education at all? Also, I don’t want our child to be burdened with fiscally caring for us when we are elderly.
Miah and I, as parents, feel an obligation to build wealth, but at the same time we do not want to abandon our ideals. We will not buy mutual funds that include weapons manufacturers like GE, companies that attempt to patent seeds like Monsanto, or multinationals that rely on sweat-shop labor like Nike and Walmart. Investing in those types of companies will not help create the kind of world I hope our child inherits. We don’t want to hinge our family’s fiscal security on global inequality. Ever since I learned that the East India Tea Company was the first multinational company traded on a stock market, I have refrained from buying any stocks or mutual funds. The East India Tea Company impoverished India, reducing it from one of the wealthiest places on earth to one of the poorest. How can I willingly take part in that system?
We do have one strategy in place. My parents helped us buy a duplex with two apartments in the back. We live in one of the units and rent out the other three. We are providing decent housing to people who make steady, but limited salaries – an electrician, a caterer, a newspaper reporter, and a webmaster at a pipe company. The rental income goes towards our mortgage payments and helps us live in the center of the city. I can bicycle to work and build equity. But our entire financial security cannot depend on one piece of real estate.
My job at Rice University working for the journal Feminist Economics has allowed me to build some savings, but I’m not sure what to do with it. They’re sitting in a savings account that earns less interest than the inflation rate! Miah and I are reading Co-Op America’s Guide to Green Investing, which came with our membership to Co-Op America. It lists mutual funds like Domini and Calvert that have social justice and environmental criteria.
Green parents do not have to be poor parents. Some of the people I lived among in Peru were demoralized and resigned to their pitiful lot. Most of them, however, were striving for dignified lives. They tilled rocky desert soil, spun wool, wove rugs, and built their homes from mud. They organized as communities along political and religious lines. Miah and I are striving for the same dignity for our family and communities, but we refuse to get a leg up by stepping on those below.
When I was twenty-one, much to the dismay of my family and friends, I quit medical school. I had just come back from working on a public health project in the poorest region of Peru. After two months among Quechua-speaking people in little Andean towns like Huascahura and Huayopuqyo, I made the break from medicine, a decision I had long considered but never built up the courage to do. Rather than spend my life focused on a particular disease or set of diseases, I wanted to devote myself to considering, encountering, and changing the way we think about justice, wealth, and living meaningful lives. Instead of studying a protein in a tapeworm, I wanted to ask why the native peoples of Peru didn’t have the kind sewage systems that would eradicate tapeworms? Why are they poor? What is poverty? Why did my life seem less meaningful than the life of a guy who makes less than $2 a day? I thought the writing life would be the best way for me to explore those questions.
The most common response to my decision from family and friends was, “How are you going to pay for your children’s college education?”
Maybe I wouldn’t be able to pay for my child to attend a private school, I thought. Maybe my future child would not want me to sublimate my ideals and desires in order to save up a three hundred thousand dollar college fund. Maybe my child would want a dad who was actualized, took risks, and lived fully. If I made my career choices based on the college-fund concept of parenting, I was worried that I would become too busy and well-paid to be physically and emotionally present. I asked myself, is a childhood good only if it culminates in attending a US top twenty college like Northwestern or Duke?
After quitting medical school, I worked for a year in publishing. Then I went to graduate school for writing and literature. I made about a thousand dollars a month teaching freshman at the University of Houston. My classes were about analyzing the language of advertising, war, colonialism, and trade agreements. I met my wife at that time and she did the same kind of work. I took a semester off to work for a feminist NGO in India. When I got back, Miah and I organized anti-war protests. I felt that I was doing my part in the struggle for global justice. I had to teach myself to live on an extremely tight budget. I bought clothes secondhand, scavenged for used furniture, and cook my own lentils, rice, and vegetables.
As soon as Miah and I started to think about having a baby, my mindset started to change. It’s all fine and good to subject yourself to poverty, but doing so to your children is another matter. Accumulating wealth is essential to weathering the big shocks that life inevitably throws at a family like illness, natural disasters, losing your livelihood, or whatever other unspeakable things. We don’t live in a country with a decent safety net. I absolutely don’t want anyone in my family to go through the humiliation and forced poverty of Medicaid, disability, or what’s left of welfare. Forget an Ivy League education without debt, what if we can’t even afford to help our child obtain a decent education at all? Also, I don’t want our child to be burdened with fiscally caring for us when we are elderly.
Miah and I, as parents, feel an obligation to build wealth, but at the same time we do not want to abandon our ideals. We will not buy mutual funds that include weapons manufacturers like GE, companies that attempt to patent seeds like Monsanto, or multinationals that rely on sweat-shop labor like Nike and Walmart. Investing in those types of companies will not help create the kind of world I hope our child inherits. We don’t want to hinge our family’s fiscal security on global inequality. Ever since I learned that the East India Tea Company was the first multinational company traded on a stock market, I have refrained from buying any stocks or mutual funds. The East India Tea Company impoverished India, reducing it from one of the wealthiest places on earth to one of the poorest. How can I willingly take part in that system?
We do have one strategy in place. My parents helped us buy a duplex with two apartments in the back. We live in one of the units and rent out the other three. We are providing decent housing to people who make steady, but limited salaries – an electrician, a caterer, a newspaper reporter, and a webmaster at a pipe company. The rental income goes towards our mortgage payments and helps us live in the center of the city. I can bicycle to work and build equity. But our entire financial security cannot depend on one piece of real estate.
My job at Rice University working for the journal Feminist Economics has allowed me to build some savings, but I’m not sure what to do with it. They’re sitting in a savings account that earns less interest than the inflation rate! Miah and I are reading Co-Op America’s Guide to Green Investing, which came with our membership to Co-Op America. It lists mutual funds like Domini and Calvert that have social justice and environmental criteria.
Green parents do not have to be poor parents. Some of the people I lived among in Peru were demoralized and resigned to their pitiful lot. Most of them, however, were striving for dignified lives. They tilled rocky desert soil, spun wool, wove rugs, and built their homes from mud. They organized as communities along political and religious lines. Miah and I are striving for the same dignity for our family and communities, but we refuse to get a leg up by stepping on those below.
Saturday, March 4, 2006
sky - thanks for your blogging. i really enjoy coming into contact with folks who care, and are trying to improve things. i like michael(tiger in my tree), and have been following his posts. i see a lot of possibility in the greater community. we are all one. i appreciate the opportunity to contribute writing to the common good of expression. as we share from ourselves, the possibilities we share grow, and become more viable and real. goodwill spreads like a disease. the infection kills resignation, and complacency. namaste
-erik
-erik
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Away from my girls for 3 and 1/2 days...
and they learn to say 'NO' without me. these milestones feel strange as you pass beneath and thru them, crossing a bridge you will never cross again and looking out over whatever body of whichever waters you happen to be crossing at the time and wondering what new eras this slight shift shall usher in. As the little epochs between the large advances grow further and further apart I think the parents begin to regain bits$ of themselves, their inate tendencies towards change and growth getting a bit of breathing room back, our own personal advances having been slown down by the sped-up hyper evolution of our children. Whew! More on this later...
Heather tells me to read Redefining Our Relationships by Wendy O-Matik but my mother beats me to it and we have an interesting discussion about a book I've just picked up that she's read thoroughly and the generational gap between our two alternative beautiful worlds smacks it's chasm of a maw open and shut on our words and hearts and confusion reigns down from our cloudy, lofty, failed ambitions which, like intentions, are used to pave the road to hell.
Soon, no matter how many rocks may block the road, Stephanie and I will begin planning an iNFORMAL aNARCHIST pARENTING pARTY! sometime around spring equinox at our Hungry Hollow Farmhouse outside of Shelton, Washington. If anyone is interested in attending please contact me: sky.cosby (at) gmail.com - more on this to follow as develops.
I miss my ladies and their rapid changing growth. I wonder what new words they will know, what concepts they will dangle directly in front of me until I realize what it is they're doing. Scarleht was rubbing the tips of her thumb, index and middle finger together gently the other day with both hands and it took me about an hour to figure out what she was doing... she was sitting on my lap and started doing it near the computer and I realized she was mimicking the motions of Steph or my's hands on the touch-pad! Brilliant guilt followed this revelation but hey, they're gonna need to be computer literate, right? They might as well watch people who use a computer as a tool rather than for pure entertainment.
I leave for Shelton in 7 hours. My time here in Walla Walla is always packed and poorly absent of certain aspects of healing I wish it would provide, namely the absence of a few key peoples from my past and my own absent-minded forlornness. But the beat goes on, and so do we. Power to the Parents!
Heather tells me to read Redefining Our Relationships by Wendy O-Matik but my mother beats me to it and we have an interesting discussion about a book I've just picked up that she's read thoroughly and the generational gap between our two alternative beautiful worlds smacks it's chasm of a maw open and shut on our words and hearts and confusion reigns down from our cloudy, lofty, failed ambitions which, like intentions, are used to pave the road to hell.
Soon, no matter how many rocks may block the road, Stephanie and I will begin planning an iNFORMAL aNARCHIST pARENTING pARTY! sometime around spring equinox at our Hungry Hollow Farmhouse outside of Shelton, Washington. If anyone is interested in attending please contact me: sky.cosby (at) gmail.com - more on this to follow as develops.
I miss my ladies and their rapid changing growth. I wonder what new words they will know, what concepts they will dangle directly in front of me until I realize what it is they're doing. Scarleht was rubbing the tips of her thumb, index and middle finger together gently the other day with both hands and it took me about an hour to figure out what she was doing... she was sitting on my lap and started doing it near the computer and I realized she was mimicking the motions of Steph or my's hands on the touch-pad! Brilliant guilt followed this revelation but hey, they're gonna need to be computer literate, right? They might as well watch people who use a computer as a tool rather than for pure entertainment.
I leave for Shelton in 7 hours. My time here in Walla Walla is always packed and poorly absent of certain aspects of healing I wish it would provide, namely the absence of a few key peoples from my past and my own absent-minded forlornness. But the beat goes on, and so do we. Power to the Parents!
Sunday, February 26, 2006
There is a Tiger in My Tree
from The Tiny Revolution, Michael Blanford's excellent papa blog!
This morning has been a whirl-wind of grouchy adults, a grouchy baby, a small flood in the kitchen, a scramble to get some laundry and dishes done and a pile of dog vomit that included a pen cap, a rubber band, a plastic wrapper and two leaves. Despite all this, Atom and I are getting into our daily groove. He is doing great at night with few feedings and often 4 to 5 hours of continuous sleep but that leaves the day to be punctuated with hourly feeding, non-stop diaper changing and daily excursions to keep our sanity. We are starting to come to the realization that Atom is what the “experts” call a high-needs baby. I guess it is a great thing that he finds himself most comfortable in our arms but I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that it can really wear me down sometimes.
We have been doing some reading and have found some great ways to calm him down. Many of the methods come from Dr. Sears but I am also having some success with the book “The Happiest Baby on the Block”. Despite the cheesy name and some dubious claims, the book was recommended by our doula and a few other parents and I think has some real merit. I will talk a little more about it later. As for now, it is warming up outside and we need to get ready to take to the streets.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
introducing my ladies to old friends
funny how currents carry us. faces that are old to me are new to them for now, becoming old. part of me longs so much for that world I've left behind, to be back and in it now like bygone times. but my eyes are different, my hands, the soles of my feet.
i hold my daughters hands to fall asleep myself.
i wake into their dawn.
i be.
i hold my daughters hands to fall asleep myself.
i wake into their dawn.
i be.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Parenting & Gender Zines - Installment #1
A few good 'zines my buddy Pirate has scanned on recently. More 'zines searchable at Zinelibrary.net
Fertility Awareness for Non-Invasive Birth Control
jane - documents from Chicago's Clandestine Abortion Service 1968-1973
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
harbored a sporadically volatile conversation...
with Steph ranging from insecurities to resentment to moving to purpose to place. Good to get some words out, mapping future good words. Still, it's hard to jack up a house in order to lay a foundation.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Addressing the almost over-powering yin of an abortion clinic waiting room while my partner gets a pap smear among other things...
from a male doctor for the first time.
The other man (a father?.. no) and I exchange a handful of eyes over the course of an hour and nearly a half and I want to shake his hand, speak openly and intimately here and now because he quite obviously seldom does and so do I and I think maybe here of all places would be a good place to start and maybe he feels something akin to that too and that’s why this is so awkward because we’ve never done it before or maybe he has but anyway we don’t and the rug is a hideously queasy pale blue and the curtains and cupboard doors are spackled and sponged a mix of teal and granite, very un-yin actually, and I think one of the plants may be real and Madonna of course looks nice atop the towers of shitty mothering magazines and it makes me really glad somewhere not very deep down at all and not really glad really that the date on the cheapo plasti-wood plaque from the better business bureau reads 2003 and the nurses here are so highly charged but somber, a mix of life and death and hope and loss and horror hovering over the place like a fog bank that you never really withdraw from but leave a little piece of yourself in for all the future patrons to perceive and when the nurse takes us in the back room and I try to wrap my mind around ’11 weeks’ while she says ‘less than a minute’ and I just blink, blink back confused tears or anger or a dust mote in the eyes of many gods and the blue rug and the mindless magazines we pore over anyways like ignorant savages must devour playboys, that strange hot cocktail of exceitement and revulsion that comes from being somewhere you’re not supposed to be but have to.
submitted by anonymous
The other man (a father?.. no) and I exchange a handful of eyes over the course of an hour and nearly a half and I want to shake his hand, speak openly and intimately here and now because he quite obviously seldom does and so do I and I think maybe here of all places would be a good place to start and maybe he feels something akin to that too and that’s why this is so awkward because we’ve never done it before or maybe he has but anyway we don’t and the rug is a hideously queasy pale blue and the curtains and cupboard doors are spackled and sponged a mix of teal and granite, very un-yin actually, and I think one of the plants may be real and Madonna of course looks nice atop the towers of shitty mothering magazines and it makes me really glad somewhere not very deep down at all and not really glad really that the date on the cheapo plasti-wood plaque from the better business bureau reads 2003 and the nurses here are so highly charged but somber, a mix of life and death and hope and loss and horror hovering over the place like a fog bank that you never really withdraw from but leave a little piece of yourself in for all the future patrons to perceive and when the nurse takes us in the back room and I try to wrap my mind around ’11 weeks’ while she says ‘less than a minute’ and I just blink, blink back confused tears or anger or a dust mote in the eyes of many gods and the blue rug and the mindless magazines we pore over anyways like ignorant savages must devour playboys, that strange hot cocktail of exceitement and revulsion that comes from being somewhere you’re not supposed to be but have to.
submitted by anonymous
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
there have been things i have done to destroy myself...
the thing i wanted most, was to be accepted, and loved, and to have a family. i have created those things, and every time i have settled into the life i created, i have done something destructive to destabilize my situation.
the thing that made the most sense to me, having my first daughter, destroyed my wife. her reaction to it, hating getting pregnant, destroyed me. my reaction to that, pulling away in a misguided attempt to protect myself, and my baby, destroyed her. her reaction to that , having an affair when my baby was months old, attempted to destroy our marriage. my reaction to her affair, shaming her for her choices, nearly destroyed her, and i am continuing to react to it. every time i turn to look, i have done something else to get back at her for her choice to look outside of our marriage for her intimacy. each time i fall in love with another of our friends, it destroys both of us further. i have not determined a way to stop that cycle. i have had limited success making real-world choices not to betray her. even when i choose not to see another friend, the inclination to self destruction sneaks up on me from behind, and i betray myself, and my family. in the moment, somehow i have a history of not seeing it happening, and each time, i continue my destructive path, justifying my actions with myself.
i feel like i am drowning in myself, with the weight of the world on my shoulders. i have made my choices, now years passed. the things i chose for myself are haunting me every day.
i am despirate for air, and i am not getting it.
i have been clouding my own judgement with pot-smoke in an attempt to look away from my accountability-for so long now, that i can't remember when i was in touch with myself.
when i am sober i suffer, and when i am stoned, i am blind to myself. i neglect my life, and the ones i love the most. i have walked away from all the things i have held the highest.
i am .... floundering.
submitted by anonymous
the thing that made the most sense to me, having my first daughter, destroyed my wife. her reaction to it, hating getting pregnant, destroyed me. my reaction to that, pulling away in a misguided attempt to protect myself, and my baby, destroyed her. her reaction to that , having an affair when my baby was months old, attempted to destroy our marriage. my reaction to her affair, shaming her for her choices, nearly destroyed her, and i am continuing to react to it. every time i turn to look, i have done something else to get back at her for her choice to look outside of our marriage for her intimacy. each time i fall in love with another of our friends, it destroys both of us further. i have not determined a way to stop that cycle. i have had limited success making real-world choices not to betray her. even when i choose not to see another friend, the inclination to self destruction sneaks up on me from behind, and i betray myself, and my family. in the moment, somehow i have a history of not seeing it happening, and each time, i continue my destructive path, justifying my actions with myself.
i feel like i am drowning in myself, with the weight of the world on my shoulders. i have made my choices, now years passed. the things i chose for myself are haunting me every day.
i am despirate for air, and i am not getting it.
i have been clouding my own judgement with pot-smoke in an attempt to look away from my accountability-for so long now, that i can't remember when i was in touch with myself.
when i am sober i suffer, and when i am stoned, i am blind to myself. i neglect my life, and the ones i love the most. i have walked away from all the things i have held the highest.
i am .... floundering.
submitted by anonymous
Tuesday, February 7, 2006
Sitting alone on my deck, cigarette in hand, thinking about my journey through mamahood. From the first moment I realized my breasts were tender...
and felt undefined possibility pulsing through my body, I was hooked. I knew I was meant to be a mama.
submitted by anonymous
My period wasn't yet late and I was thinking of names, thinking how the hell to get out of the chaotic swirling mess of an abusive relationship I was in; thinking of how I could save my own girlchild from being raised a victim, how I could teach my boychild to solve problems without his fists. Already envisioning myself saved and reborn through the magic of birth. I had no idea that after the birth the work really began. Far from bestowing grace, birth is messy... it pushed me to the edge of strength, through terror and collapse and beyond death... into greater awareness: bigger lessons: harder work.
On that first night home, alone with a wailing newborn, exhausted from 18 hours of labor and 2 days without sleep, I was walking into walls and to this day I can't remember if I ever thought to nurse my babe. Maybe I did... maybe I knew just what to do... but that's not how I remember it. This was my initiation into motherhood: exhausted to the point of collapse, alone and inadequate: or so I thought... Now, after nearly ten years of mothering my three girls and myself, I know that I will never live up to the cultural vision I had of being the perfect mother and finally, I no longer care.
Now I know how complex the dance is: allowing trauma from my childhood to resurface, honored by my willingness to see, held like an infant in need of love; rocking myself gently, I find compassion and forgiveness for my parents, myself, my children. I accept the fact that I'm going to yell sometimes... that I often hear my voice and think my mother is in the room... I notice more when I am soft and nurturing: yielding to my girls' needs with grace...
As I reflect on my strength, weakness, failure and bliss I am curious about papas... how do our journeys mirror one another and where do they diverge? What unexpected gifts come when you are pushed to your limits and how do your limits differ from mine?
submitted by anonymous
My period wasn't yet late and I was thinking of names, thinking how the hell to get out of the chaotic swirling mess of an abusive relationship I was in; thinking of how I could save my own girlchild from being raised a victim, how I could teach my boychild to solve problems without his fists. Already envisioning myself saved and reborn through the magic of birth. I had no idea that after the birth the work really began. Far from bestowing grace, birth is messy... it pushed me to the edge of strength, through terror and collapse and beyond death... into greater awareness: bigger lessons: harder work.
On that first night home, alone with a wailing newborn, exhausted from 18 hours of labor and 2 days without sleep, I was walking into walls and to this day I can't remember if I ever thought to nurse my babe. Maybe I did... maybe I knew just what to do... but that's not how I remember it. This was my initiation into motherhood: exhausted to the point of collapse, alone and inadequate: or so I thought... Now, after nearly ten years of mothering my three girls and myself, I know that I will never live up to the cultural vision I had of being the perfect mother and finally, I no longer care.
Now I know how complex the dance is: allowing trauma from my childhood to resurface, honored by my willingness to see, held like an infant in need of love; rocking myself gently, I find compassion and forgiveness for my parents, myself, my children. I accept the fact that I'm going to yell sometimes... that I often hear my voice and think my mother is in the room... I notice more when I am soft and nurturing: yielding to my girls' needs with grace...
As I reflect on my strength, weakness, failure and bliss I am curious about papas... how do our journeys mirror one another and where do they diverge? What unexpected gifts come when you are pushed to your limits and how do your limits differ from mine?
waiting for the plow
submitted by anonymous - if you think it would be appreciated, if not, enjoy it yourself - i wrote it right after XXXX and my separation, and it was a real healer, just thinking of it in terms of the wheel turning/natural transition.
outside, the snow flutters to the ground. crisp, frozen grass is poised for the cover. every warning has been given of inclement weather ahead. surprise is not my state of mind. inside my warm house, i am braced against the blustery cold. fall leaves, dry from the previous month, now frozen, crunch beneath the feet of visitors - come knocking to check, and cherish. well meaning company comes, and talk goes on for hours. when bundled feet leave the warmth, they bustle off through powdery fresh flakes. they are bound for other warm hearths. bulbs in the ground, now covered with dusty layers, harden off for spring blooms. unharvested onions, and garlic winter - ready to grow, and multiply when warmer air, and water comes. hot foods cook in a stove, stoked up high. a feast is laid, celebrating what was. preparations can be made for ritual. celebration-joyous pondering of things to come. practitioners set valuable intentions. speech, and prayer focused on living, and death. these are times spent waiting for the plow.
outside, the snow flutters to the ground. crisp, frozen grass is poised for the cover. every warning has been given of inclement weather ahead. surprise is not my state of mind. inside my warm house, i am braced against the blustery cold. fall leaves, dry from the previous month, now frozen, crunch beneath the feet of visitors - come knocking to check, and cherish. well meaning company comes, and talk goes on for hours. when bundled feet leave the warmth, they bustle off through powdery fresh flakes. they are bound for other warm hearths. bulbs in the ground, now covered with dusty layers, harden off for spring blooms. unharvested onions, and garlic winter - ready to grow, and multiply when warmer air, and water comes. hot foods cook in a stove, stoked up high. a feast is laid, celebrating what was. preparations can be made for ritual. celebration-joyous pondering of things to come. practitioners set valuable intentions. speech, and prayer focused on living, and death. these are times spent waiting for the plow.
Sunday, February 5, 2006
lost in the social sea of downtown olympia
for a night, free from all responsibilities save those I cannot banish from the dark recesses of my partitioned brain. super bowl sunday. bob marley's birthday. i talk with steph on the phone, chatting about lyli and scarleht, rubbing a hangover from my haggard eyes. i miss her voice even though i should be used to this slightly random work schedule we have been moving through due to my self and alternative employments. but it gives me uninterrupted chunks of time to spend with my girls. Sometimes this blessing is a bit boxing but I try to find time between the chaos for myself. These moments of self-reflection become an ironing out of my latest emotional wrinkles whether they come in the form of a cigarette, splitting wood, a quick bike ride down to Pickering Passage to sit and think about the underside of bridges, toss rocks in the water and watch the Sound work her silent magics.
tomorrow lyli and scarleht and i will walk out to the mailbox, making the trek in just under 45 minutes and completely wiping them out before nap time. they are 20 months and 4 days old today and these past 2 years have been the hardest ones I have walked through to date, but also the most valuable in the sense of total sensory engagement and moral mental lessons in life, the boardgame you can't get bored of for long.
tomorrow lyli and scarleht and i will walk out to the mailbox, making the trek in just under 45 minutes and completely wiping them out before nap time. they are 20 months and 4 days old today and these past 2 years have been the hardest ones I have walked through to date, but also the most valuable in the sense of total sensory engagement and moral mental lessons in life, the boardgame you can't get bored of for long.
Friday, February 3, 2006
Most of our friends don't have babies and don't relate to Dylan very warmly.
I remember that before Dylan was born I was easily annoyed by the demands of friends' babies. I can see how couples with babies tend to socialize with each other almost exclusively. Still, I don't want to give up my relationships with friends who don't have kids. We'll have to work something out.
Being with Dylan gives me the chance to express my intuitive, feminine, yin self. It's easy for a man to always be in situations that call for aggressive, rational, manipulative perspectives and skills. With Dylan I move out of that more completely than I ever have before. The obvious importance of these new skills in relating to Dylan helps me respect and value them as they develop.
All in all, I now enjoy most of the time I spend with Dylan - taking care fo him, playing with him, watching him change and grow. He is one of the most important parts of my life. There are other important parts - my relationship with Susan, my work, being with other people. I don't want to give them up for Dylan, or him for them. I look for the balance, remembering that there is as much total space in my life as I have energy to keep clear.
excerpted from fatherjournal, by david steinberg
Being with Dylan gives me the chance to express my intuitive, feminine, yin self. It's easy for a man to always be in situations that call for aggressive, rational, manipulative perspectives and skills. With Dylan I move out of that more completely than I ever have before. The obvious importance of these new skills in relating to Dylan helps me respect and value them as they develop.
All in all, I now enjoy most of the time I spend with Dylan - taking care fo him, playing with him, watching him change and grow. He is one of the most important parts of my life. There are other important parts - my relationship with Susan, my work, being with other people. I don't want to give them up for Dylan, or him for them. I look for the balance, remembering that there is as much total space in my life as I have energy to keep clear.
excerpted from fatherjournal, by david steinberg
When Susan was pregnant, I imagined that writing and taking care of the baby would fit together well.
I figured that as long as I was home taking care of the baby I would do some writing as well. It seems incredible now that I could have so completely misunderstood what it would be like to have a baby.
I have resisted the shift from living on my schedule to living on Dylan's. I've tried to hold on to my old patterns, failed, and built up a lot of resentment in the process. After six months I think I'm finally letting go of my old life. The task is to build a new life that I like as well or better. One day, at the ocean, I cried while trying to say goodbye to a life that I loved and had worked hard to create.
Having a baby has brought an astounding amount of day-to-day work. A lot gets lost in the shuffle, like having time to sit and relax, time to talk about things that are hard to say, time to sort out feelings and become whole again. There are no more Sunday morning breakfasts in bed.
I wish now that I had prepared myself better for having a baby. I let myself get caught by surprise, and then felt resentful, as if I had been cheated out of something I couldn't quite define.
I'm not willing to be the second, somewhat foreign, parent. I tried that for a couple of days in a pique of frustration with Dylan. I felt distant and alienated from him almost immediately. It was horrible. Better to share responsibility for him, whatever the frustration.
Susan and I agree that we'll both work part-time and share taking care of Dylan. That way we'll both have outside lives and both be involved parents.
I still get an empty feeling when people ask me what I'm doing. Most of my energy in the last six months has focused on Dylan - on taking care of him and getting used to his being here. I carry enough man-work expectations in me that I feel uncomfortable using that to identify myself to people.
Having Dylan has made me feel confused, overwhelmed, uncertain - then bitter and resentful. The feeling of being up against something I can't handle, that is too much for me. So many things need to be done, so many emotional places need to be put together, and my energy outside of Dylan is so very, very low. Life has become complicated. I feel the jaws of middle-aged American mediocrity open wide.
Often my anger and frustration come out at Susan. It seems ridiculous to rage at Dylan, and I'm too defensive to blame myself.
I'm an only child, and I never babysat as a teenager. I knew nothing about babies when Dylan was born. My confidence in myself as a father was very shaky. I could hold myself together as long as everything went smoothly, but when something unusual happened I panicked. I got very depressed at my lack of intuitive baby sense.
Once I admitted all that to myself, and to Susan, I could face my weaknesses and work on them. I began to see that there were times when I was really good with Dylan, when I really did have good intuitive sense about relating to a baby.
excerpted without permission (so far) from Fatherjournal by David Steinberg, who went on to become a very interesting man, it seems. I will e-mail him tomorrow and ask him if it's okay if I put this on my site, but it's goin' up regardless.
I have resisted the shift from living on my schedule to living on Dylan's. I've tried to hold on to my old patterns, failed, and built up a lot of resentment in the process. After six months I think I'm finally letting go of my old life. The task is to build a new life that I like as well or better. One day, at the ocean, I cried while trying to say goodbye to a life that I loved and had worked hard to create.
Having a baby has brought an astounding amount of day-to-day work. A lot gets lost in the shuffle, like having time to sit and relax, time to talk about things that are hard to say, time to sort out feelings and become whole again. There are no more Sunday morning breakfasts in bed.
I wish now that I had prepared myself better for having a baby. I let myself get caught by surprise, and then felt resentful, as if I had been cheated out of something I couldn't quite define.
I'm not willing to be the second, somewhat foreign, parent. I tried that for a couple of days in a pique of frustration with Dylan. I felt distant and alienated from him almost immediately. It was horrible. Better to share responsibility for him, whatever the frustration.
Susan and I agree that we'll both work part-time and share taking care of Dylan. That way we'll both have outside lives and both be involved parents.
I still get an empty feeling when people ask me what I'm doing. Most of my energy in the last six months has focused on Dylan - on taking care of him and getting used to his being here. I carry enough man-work expectations in me that I feel uncomfortable using that to identify myself to people.
Having Dylan has made me feel confused, overwhelmed, uncertain - then bitter and resentful. The feeling of being up against something I can't handle, that is too much for me. So many things need to be done, so many emotional places need to be put together, and my energy outside of Dylan is so very, very low. Life has become complicated. I feel the jaws of middle-aged American mediocrity open wide.
Often my anger and frustration come out at Susan. It seems ridiculous to rage at Dylan, and I'm too defensive to blame myself.
I'm an only child, and I never babysat as a teenager. I knew nothing about babies when Dylan was born. My confidence in myself as a father was very shaky. I could hold myself together as long as everything went smoothly, but when something unusual happened I panicked. I got very depressed at my lack of intuitive baby sense.
Once I admitted all that to myself, and to Susan, I could face my weaknesses and work on them. I began to see that there were times when I was really good with Dylan, when I really did have good intuitive sense about relating to a baby.
excerpted without permission (so far) from Fatherjournal by David Steinberg, who went on to become a very interesting man, it seems. I will e-mail him tomorrow and ask him if it's okay if I put this on my site, but it's goin' up regardless.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
fatherjournal: five years of awakening to fatherhood
by david steinberg
times change press
my father (go figure) dug this little number up for me. just started reading it last night but so far so good. the book basically chronicles the first five years of david's relationship with his son Dylan as he attempts to subvert the dominant paradigm and be the dad america ignores. more to follow as i slowly read this powerful little text. oh, and if anyone knows what happened to times change press, I'm rather curious. They pumped out some amazing books and then dropped off the face of the planet.
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