Autumn reminds me of change and passing time. My acquaintance with this season is a pleasant, calm sort of familiarity. As the saying goes, “This is not my first rodeo.”
I am growing into a contentment in this time of life that matches this season perfectly. As a creative spirit trained in scientific method, I enjoy finding the perfect metaphor or frame for processes or events. Nothing exists without context, and finding the right context with which to present a bit of information helps expand the audience who can understand and use that bit of information.
When I look at women’s culture and attempt to describe aspects of it in my writing, I employ these framing methods. In my recent attempts to discuss the stage of life I am entering I felt the rightness of using autumn as a metaphor, but something was not clicking or fitting as I tried to plug women’s imagery into the metaphor.
I rejected the traditional, rather derogatory, depiction of someone at my stage of life as a crone quite some time ago, well before I entered this wonderfully faceted and sage time of life. I also rejected the term midlife that is currently enjoying significant use in online communities. I sincerely doubt that I will live to be over 115 years of age, and I would have to do this, if I was at a midpoint of my life.
How we visualize ourselves shapes attitude, influences energy, and touches many of the ways we project ourselves into the world. I am not a dried up hag or crone. Life energy courses through me in a different way than it did at other times of life, but it is a vibrant, kinetic aspect of my being. I am plump to overflowing with life energy.
“The sere and yellow leaf” per Shakespeare, connotes and evokes nothing off-putting or hideous, as neither should a time of life. In a conscious effort to draw no boundaries through the use of religious imagery, rather to bridge barriers, I do not propose using Goddess terminology to replace maiden, matron, crone terminology.
So, for lack of any term more apt, I am autumnal.
Does Maturity Modify Truth?
Men are territorial in a different way than women. It is not that women do not defend what is theirs. But the theirs which they defend are people and not places, are relationships and not cultural constructs.
I have understood this since my time spent on Cayo Santiago as an undergraduate student. Some of our behaviors are expressly and deeply primate. Many of the elements of society that we would like to believe are cultural, learned and passed on through education and societal institutions and indicative or some sort of moral fabric are biologically-based behaviors.
Yes, culture is learned and passed on generation to generation and the degree to which this happens in people is apparently far greater than in any other species.
What I rarely see mentioned, and never discussed in detail, is that a large portion of our learned systems were created to culturally re-enforce biological inclinations.
Can we disentangle testosterone from the enforcement of wearing a hijab or a wedding veil? So much of our societal infrastructure is built upon territorially derived concepts which are imaginary and just as ephemeral as connections between people. Borders are just lines drawn in the sand, erased by wind, rain, and boot tracks.
Civil society is nothing but agreed upon concepts.
What connects two people? What is friendship? What is a parental-child relationship? Why do you smile when you see the face of an old friend you haven’t seen in years or decades?
I have been thinking about these things in depth as of late because of high school reunions, the death of my last living sibling, and the pride I felt when my daughter said she wanted no veil, nor any tribute to the notion of a veil, as we picked out her wedding dress. This juxtaposition of life passages has made me even more contemplative than usual.
As we age, if we are lucky enough to appreciate that age is a gift of the universe to our transient physical nature, many of us begin to reflect on life and the roads we have walked. Our reflection shares many of the traits of youthful questioning so well summed up in song lyrics, “and the lonely voice of youth cries, ‘What is truth?”
I am still calling out, “What is truth?” My mature iteration of questions to the cosmos understands that there are no answers to these cries formed in the lonely hours of the sleepless nights but the answer, the truth, we find in our hearts that lives beyond the realm of words and definitions. Bliss, happiness, and belonging all exist beyond the material world of things, ownership, and desire.
Of Rocks and Women Born
One of the sites visited during a recent “drive-about” was Rock Art Ranch south of the area between Winslow and Holbrook. I think the canyon we visited is now called Bell Cow Canyon.
Kokopelli, the flute player, beaver, eagle, and various hoofed and horned ungulates decorate the canyon walls with what might have been mystical or magical depictions. Or perhaps it was an art studio. Interpretation is always problematic or so I learned in school. I also learned when studying kinship that paternity is always problematic for the anthropologist to sort out. Kinship is reckoned differently by different people. And then there is deceit. Women sometimes choose not to share the identity of their lovers.
No matter what, though, women have birthed babies. Very few pre-literate societies have preserved images of birth. Conjecture about whether an image is one of fertility or fecundity, a prayer or blessing, a metaphor or giving thanks cannot be known.
No image out of prehistory is more evocative, at least to my mind, than the Hisotsinom petroglyph of the Birthing Woman.
Perhaps the Hopi elders know some of the intent of their ancestors, they still visit places on the ranch. Brantley Baird, the rancher who guides visitors through the material collections that evidence of thousands of years of human occupation, including regular visits by Hopi leaders, the last being only a few weeks ago, knows that as the current land-owner he joins a long line of tenants on this little bit of Earth who cherish it, and whose descendants continue to respect the land and lives that came into being there.
We are all children of the rocks and birthing women.
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To find out more about the artists, as best we know, I suggest reading the report from the 2014 University of Arizona Rock Art Ranch Field School.
Containing, Storing, Shipping
First let me clarify that this is a non-sponsored post. I was however invited to a pre-opening luncheon and tour of the store with other Tucson bloggers and to the private opening celebration at The Container Store at the Tucson Mall where all attendees were given small gifts. All opinions are my own.
Containing and storing bits and pieces gathered along the way in your life can be a wonderful way to review life stories and memorabilia, as well as to sort to retain and sort to give away, and parse out those things which need special attention so as to be preserved in archival quality storage boxes, envelopes and folders.
I was delighted to be able to peruse and do a bit of research and documentation at the store ahead of the public grand opening.
Children Tasered, Sometimes to Death
Tasers were introduced as an alternative to shooting someone with bullets because their use can be lethal but is less lethal than bullets. Tasers are less likely to kill the person tased than shooting that person with bullets from a gun.
Less likely, but still a lethal tool for stopping someone from an action that calls for the use of lethal force.
What makes the use of lethal force appropriate to stop and apprehend:
- a young girl who is naked in public and obviously in a mentally compromised situation
- a young graffiti artist who had painted a single letter on an abandoned building
- a peaceful protester on the steps of a public building
Nothing. Nothing makes any of these criminal behaviors by police acceptable. The militarization of police personnel and the expanding tolerance of police acting as judges, juries and executioners as they respond to civil disturbances must end.
We must not allow the use of excessive force, brutality, and execution to become accepted security or policing behaviors. Children are routinely tasered by security staff, rent-a-cops. Neither must we allow the police to decide which laws are worthy of their enforcement efforts.
We must not allow… That is right WE…
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America.)
So my dear readers, write to your local, state and national representatives and let them know that the expanding police state must be abolished. Here is the link for contacting your reps.
Then I recommend you go and watch a movie this weekend. Enjoy yourself. Go see: Elysium, it is the best offering out there this week.
My Cat Went Mad While I Was Away
Jujubee, the Siamese, and Itty Bitty Gray Kitty are shy kitties and most people, if it wasn’t for the litter box, would never know I had cats. They, in fact, are downright anti-social. I didn’t think it could get worse. It did.
While I was away at #BlogHer13 and then vacationing in MN with my daughter, Hubby was in charge of feeding and poop-scooping. He as a care-giver and the presence of our Neapolitan Mastiff in the usually cat-only bedroom drove the Siamese over-the-edge.
She moved in under the bed and apparently only came out to eat when neither Hubby nor dog were in the house. She left evidence of through-put on the rug next to the bed. Apparently the trip out of our bedroom, across the hall, into and through my office, and into the bathroom off the office where the litter-boxes are, was a gauntlet she was just too afraid to run without the presence of the Human-Mama-NotCat somewhere in the house.
Once I returned home Jujubee was out from under the bed in about 10 minutes. It took her about 20 minutes to come cuddle with me. A thorough cleaning with bleach seems to have the litter-box back on her radar-scope.
She is a rescue, so we don’t know what the first 10 to 15 weeks of her life were like, and she sat in a closet staring at a wall for a week after her spaying. We think it was a neural reaction to the anesthetic used. My daughter spent the week with her, soothing her and nudging her into the world of interaction. She is damaged, no doubt. But we don’t know how, exactly. Perhaps this is separation anxiety. I suspect it is because it did not manifest for a few days after I left, and it is dissipating now that I am back.
I am going to try to create some activity in my cat’s life that does not involve me so that the next trip will not be as traumatic for her.