Poem for Dorothy Parker
by Elizabeth Jackson Doshi

Enough is not part
of my repertoire
Hunger fills this space
Its always draught and want
and need and please
that the plenty
in my case

If I had a check
for every emptied store
a credit for my dues
there'd be no grave
for all my joys
nor tomb
for happy news

OPENING

The last time I felt like this was when I was in the process of falling in love with my husband AND AT THE SAME TIME having to leave a job about which I cared a great deal. I was in a state of free fall. The window was open and I was leaving a position where many of my friends and connections existed and my sense of self was being questioned and redefined. The difference between the last time and this time is that I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO LOSE and I still feel like I am losing. And last time I managed to snag a really excellent job within 2 weeks!

The rune for opening looks like this:

<


and its meaning is clarity or darkness dispelled.

I tried to get on a plane last Thursday for Bali with my family but was barred from boarding because the airline we were ticketed with insisted on me having 4 blank visa pages in my passport (I had three). It was for me the last straw in a series of seemingly strange events that have me thinking I have lost my mojo, my strength, my magic. Everything I have been trying to do since January has eluded me. The window is open and my songbird has flown.

Or has it?

NO MIND

The No Mind is the intrinsic essence of mind, the true self. It is inherently pure and good, and in Christian terms it can be said to participate in the Kingdom of God. In Eastern traditions it is prior to thought, prior to desire, prior to any conceptualization at all. It is discovered by stripping away all sensation, desire, concepts, intellection, volition, and awareness of "I." It partakes of the Oneness of all. Buddhism calls this mind the Buddha Nature, and much of Buddhist practice is aimed at its realization. They call it "no-mind" because it is without any grasping at a (selfish) self. Taoists agree, and seek to strip away all intellection and formalism in order to arrive at the spontaneous activity of the natural man who lives at one with the Tao of the universe. All attachments must be stripped away until there is nothing but emptiness. Then the heart can be heard.

Mushin (無心; Chinese wúxīn; English translation "no-mindedness") is a mental state into which very highly trained martial artists are said to enter during combat. They also practice this mental state during everyday activities. The term is shortened from mushin no shin (無心の心), a Zen expression meaning mind of no mind and is also referred to as the state of "no-mindness". That is, a mind not fixed or occupied by thought or emotion and thus open to everything. For the origin of the mushin concept, see Muga-mushin. It is somewhat analogous to flow experienced by artists deeply in a creative process.

Old World maps fascinated me as a young adult. I even considered having one tattooed to my back. I am happy to say that I decided against it. Though maps continue to interest me, especially hand-drawn maps. In Fourth grade at many Waldorf schools the students are taught to make maps of their classrooms (or bedrooms) and then the school, town and state. Learning how to put everything in its place and in correct proportion is a good exercise.

In the David Foster Wallace book, "Infinite Jest" his main character refers to his mind or brain as his "map". I hold true to this and so I include the following poem I wrote a decade ago.

My Minds
by Elizabeth Jackson Doshi

There are several minds like deities
that reign o'er my evolution
on the strength of their varieties
and wheels need revolution


The gods that are consistent
turn to turn away
these furies spin persistent
For punishment is pay

Count these minds in me
actors on a much loved stage
adored in tempered purity
worshiped in epidemic rage

The most unlikely friends
I'm forced to call my own
The coward and the hypocrite
The Infirm and the clone

All is not completely lost
and as my tongue would have it
the tales I tell are tickets tossed
to stars redeemed and so uncrossed
My freedom almost nearly won
to galaxy from favored sun

No one sees my efforts now
but minds within needs surely bow
at tables set and sched's complete
no love drops lost of tempest's beat

Confusion guided, strayers found
I wooed a murderer's heart to peace
and tore the dullard's sense unbound
These tasks I vow to never cease
as long as living I still long live
to stumble into prayer and give
the only prize I care to own
in name, my minds' immortal bones.

LOVE

The word love is overused but also powerful and creative in its work.In my youthful innocence I wrote my admissions essay for Bard College's undergraduate program on the word love. They accepted me but I dropped out after two years. I think I fell in love and left when my boyfriend graduated. They should have known.

Sonnet XXX
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.
From Fatal Interview (1931)

"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." Henry David Thoreau

How do you KNOW what you KNOW? And also, when it changes (as it always does)?

I know I am kind but I also know I am moderately difficult.
I know I claim kinship with many people with whom I have no blood ties but there are times that I cast out a whole country with the word, "Fools!"
I know the present moment is the best for finding truth and that the past has increasingly drugged me and detained me from living fully.
I know my "enemies" are really angels disguised in order to teach.
I know that patience is a powerfully ally but not yet my personal friend.
I know parenthood is a joyful and sublime journey on the path of humility.
I know my beliefs do not define my essence nor yours and yet at times I pretend to think otherwise.
I know love is not always a bouquet of roses but sometimes a desperate longing or an emptiness waiting for that which comes.

Jump from the frying pan
into a cool, deep, mineral bath.

Jump wildly like the Bird of Paradise
and then land like a Gooney Bird.

Jump rope and skip class.

Jump ship and sink or swim.

Jump in
out
side
side
on
in
OUT.

Inky Pinky

is a game we used to play on long road trips. One person thinks of two rhyming words and then provides a simple hint to help others solve the riddle.

Example:

Itch niche- A spot for scratching
Ill Bill- Sickly William
Imp Blimp- A dirigible for the mischievous
Piglet Iglet- Miniature ice house for young swine


Note* Any words will do, not just those that begin with an "I"- but I thought in honor of this day...

Hello!
We are hooked!
Tho' not usually if lately you've looked
for marble hats
or hungry walls.

We aren't usually found together at all.

But who cares? Said the husk
of a handle-bar tarp
to the trampoline horse
in the habit of a harp!

Note* The idea of "Hooking" comes from "Rip the Page" by Karen Benke, a Trumpeter book.

Gentlefolk I greet thee!
Gather around to gaze
at this grand gift-

That Jack with his good sense and guts has got
From the greedy giant.

I generate for you here
a list of other gains:

Gold! And the goodwill of the dame of said "governor"
for freeing her from his grape-gorging-girth.
She will not grieve greatly!

A harp whose gospel strains would melt
the glacial heart of any gladiator.

And Goodness, the gratitude we have
for that guy, Jack

Golly gee, is pretty great!

If only we could fly
we would be free
from this foolishness
of forgetting.

Our wings now fins,
our song forever filtered
through the flux and flow.

Flushed, flung,
finally our fleet surfaces.
Forests, fields and above,
"What is this firmament?"

Enter our empathic and empirical existence and
end your ever-excluding ethnocentrism.

My Ethiopian Ebony locks
has entered like Sheba

A queen even as she eats
the edibles of others,

"Oh, Excuse me" she emits
while exiting
the establishment entirely.

Don't dither!
Delaying will only disrupt
the dawning of the day.
Dare to dash
through the open door
Discuss no more,
Deeper, come this way!

Cast an eye
and cut it close.
They are creatures
both candid and cunning.

I crave the curl
of a sun-contented cat!
Or the disappearing act
that is the feline running!

For comfort
take the B.
It is soft on the lips and no matter
how violent the bear
one imagines his soft sleeping form
Breathing.

And the bell.
No amount of ringing
could erase its angelic call.

In the beginning was the word
and the word was everything inside and apart.

Sound created matter and words formed them into beings.
The Apple was just the start.

Ah is the sound of wonder and what better way to enter
the world, into the alphabet and the pieces of our written heart?

Today is my sister R's birthday. I believe that makes her 39. One more year to be 30 lucky girl. And soon I will see her. There are seven of us and she is the youngest sister but don't let that fool you. She is certainly quite a commanding person. And I am wishing her a magical year. Go Girl!

For the next month I will be posting every day as part of the A to Z challenge. In this way I will finish my Waldorf Alphabet Book AND find a way to post/write more regularly. It will also keep me from going crazy waiting to find out whether I got a job in Seattle.

Blessings on the month of March and wishes for present-mindedness for April!

Yesterday the girls returned from the enforced Elizabeth-is-looking-for-a-job break from homeschooling. We got right into it.

Here are two forms we moved first before drawing. That is, each of us took our place on a triangle and one after the other moved one color section of the form. The two forms are similar enough to show how straight lines and curved lines can really feel so profoundly different.


And on to Pythagoras...

Statement on the Pending Reduction of Intercountry Adoption in Ethiopia posted by Joint Council's Be the Answer campaign website:


"Last week the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs announced their intention to reduce intercountry adoptions by 90% beginning March 10, 2011. The Ministry’s plan for a dramatic reduction is apparently based on two primary issues; 1) the assumption that corruption in intercountry adoption is systemic and rampant and 2) the Ministry’s resources should be focused on the children for whom intercountry adoption is not an option. Without further announcements by the Government of Ethiopia, it is our understanding that the Ministry’s plan will be initiated this week.

The Ministry’s plan is a tragic, unnecessary and disproportionate reaction to concerns of isolated abuses in the adoption process and fails to reflect the overwhelmingly positive, ethical and legal services provided to children and families through intercountry adoption. Rather than eliminate the right of Ethiopian children to a permanent family, we encourage the Ministry to accept the partnerships offered by governments, NGOs, and foundations. Such partnerships could increase the Ministry’s capacity to regulate service providers and further ensure ethical adoptions.

The Ministry’s plan which calls for the processing of only five adoption cases per work day, will result not only in systemic and lasting damage to a large sector of social services, but will have an immediate impact on the lives and futures of children. Moving from over 4,000 adoptions per year to less than 500 will result in thousands of children languishing in under-regulated and poorly resourced institutions for years. For those children who are currently institutionalized and legally available for adoption, the Ministry’s plan will increase their time languishing in institutions for up to 7-years.

Joint Council respectfully urges the Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs to reconsider their plan and to partner with governments, NGOs and foundations to achieve their goals and avoid the coming tragedy for children and families."

Be The Answer is a campaign of Joint Council on International Chiildren's Services

Altho' I may get in trouble for posting this, I just had to do it 'lil rocker!

It is 4:30 in the morning and although I did take a remedy for jet lag which helped with dizziness and disorientation I cannot sleep.

All is well here. Everyone survived without me.

Saturday is Booty's birthday and party and we are celebrating grandpa's birthday tonite. For Booty's party we are having a girl's tea with sandwiches, silk painting and games. I am looking forward to it and hope that my very sweet girl has fun.

Recently found out that for many years I was referred to as "Gov."
I guess that doesn't surprise me. My youngest sister has a similar moniker, "Generalissima".

Are we just a bunch of bossy ladies?