Through the Looking Glass; or, There and Back Again

Visualization has always been a most helpful technique.

This is what I am visualizing lately:

and meanwhile, moments such as scratching an itch on LG's back he just can't reach, BG making a joke, Snowy stirring up shrimp and grits on the stove; Student 1 and Student 2 taking a structured peer-to-peer play session and running with it--- not needing my prompts at all after the first few minutes, indeed, taking their prompts from each other to the point we were all howling with laughter, literally on the floor---this---this is what my eyes remain fixed upon.

May you be happy with what your eyes are fixed upon, dear reader. I'll talk with you soon.

To Make a Long Story Short; or, Words, Don't Fail Me Now

Dear reader, I don't have a long post for you this week.

Today I spend cozily cooking in the kitchen. Vegetarian lasagna that we all devoured: whole wheat noodles, roasted fennel and eggplant, good olive oil, parmesan reggiano, and soy Italian sausages. Spiced tomato gravy, with ground smoked almonds, chilis, garlic, cilantro, and tumeric to serve with charred sweet peppers stuffed with potatoes mashed with wasabi, lemon, garam masala (thank you Anita!) and tumeric.

Imagine me as the cheery cooky today, with a tofurkey drumstick.

Dear reader, I don't have a long post for you this week.
I know, it's only the second week that I've returned to the blogging community, to you, my dear readers and neighbors all.
You see, part of my renewed commitment to live a better-balanced, better-quality-of-life life is that Mr. X has, through that beautifully sharp double-edged sword we know as the internet, found me.

Dear reader, dear neighbor, I debated as to if I should share this; I've ultimately concluded that I should because silence has always been the bluntest of weapons.
I'm still running the trials, dear reader: figuring out what I can have and what I can't.
We'll talk about it soon.

Cheery Cooky
Mixed media on book 6.5 x 9" ©2006
http://www.femtasia.nl/Site/Work.html

Dancing with Sir Isaac; or, Maintaining Equilibrium in a New Year

"Make problem behaviors irrelevant: Developers of the plan should identify those situations (stimulus conditions) that set the occasion for problem behaviors and organize the environment to reduce the likelihood that these conditions are encountered....Making the problem behavior irrelevant typically involves structural changes: altering the physical settings, enriching the environment, improving the activities or curriculum, increasing predictability and choice options available to the person.

Make problem behaviors inefficient: The efficiency of a behavior refers to the combined effects if (a) the physical effort required for a person to perform the behavior, (b) the number of times the person must perform the behavior before he or she is reinforced...and (c) the time delay between the first problem behavior and the reinforcement...When feasible, the support plan should define an alternative, socially appropriate, and more efficient way for the person to achieve the same reward. "


--- O'Neill, Horner, Albin, Sprague, Storey, Newton; Functional Assessment and Program Development for Problem Behavior: A Practical Handbook, Second Edition

*

p=mv

---Sir Isaac Newton

*

B1/ B1+B2 = R1/R1 +R2
(proportion of responses = proportion of reinforcement)
---The Matching Law , Richard Hernnstein

*
...Physician, heal thyself.
---The Bible, Luke 4:23


Dear reader, I do thank you for joining me this past year. You have helped me so very much with this thing called language, this thing that is one of the most social of behaviors. You are most excellent teachers, all; I wish for you the good stuff of your best hopes and dreams in 2008.
You know, when I was a girl growing up, New Year's Eve and Easter were always ever more exciting for me than Christmas, more than Valentine's Day or birthdays. New Year's Eve and Easter, these were the holidays that truly seemed holy: out of nothing, something comes.
That to me, was always the Good Stuff, something not to be taken lightly for sure.
But I must share with you before this new year is any older something that happened this year that very much affected me in the same sleight-of-hand manner. Hopefully this will answer my dear friend Artist's question that she posed to me in this post closing my writing about violence for the month of October.

Dear reader, it is difficult to explain how one can move beyond violence.

I often think about the urban legend that says that the sounds of the eruption of Vesuvius were recorded, Edison-style, on the clay that was being built up upon the potter's wheels of that day: spinning on the wheel, taking the voice of the hands, but ultimately overwritten by doom and petrified. Once impressed and solidified in such a manner, such a pot could only repeat those sounds; there would be no way to retrieve the sounds of the potter's hands before it.

If you looked at the pot as a vehicle for sound, then you would have no choice but to accept its record. If you cannot accept its terrible record in your possession, than you would have to change the record by destroying the pot: it could be broken into shards, the shards ground up and made into slip, some cycle of creation and destruction begun anew. All in all, a most inefficient way to address the situation---at least for me, dear reader.

Or you could look at the pot as a vessel; when you see the pot this way, you change it. When you see the pot this way you change yourself. All in all, a most efficient way to address the situation---at least for me, dear reader.

I was in the habit of googling X. I had done so mostly for concerns of safety. I wanted to know that BG and I had that buffer zone that physical distance gives. Sometime in the summer, I retrieved hits that I had never before seen in association with X. When I opened these links, I saw that they were conversations from an internet discussion group. In some, X was a participant; in others, X was the topic of conversation. The common thread in each and every discussion was the absolute social isolation of X. He was completely isolated from the others, and frenetically, vehemently oppositional, hostile: at every turn, his attempts to establish himself by aggression and vitriol landed him in an even more derisive position with the others. Just as suddenly as he sprung up, he was suddenly quiet.

I cannot tell you what it was to me to read all the invective hurled by him and hurled at him. It broke my heart. It was deeply distressing that such a being could still be caught in such patterns of suffering---and this was, when it all came down to it, the biological father of my BG. I felt incredibly saddened. I began crying for no reason while doing dishes, while walking from my car across the parking lot into the grocery store. It took a little bit of time to accept that feeling. Not long after, it lessened: in its place, I felt confused. Uncomfortable. Off balance. Out-of-kilter.

Where did it come from, this compassion? I had abandoned attempts at any concepts of forgiveness towards X, truly I had. You can't get blood out of a turnip, they say. You can't get that out of neroli, I said. And yet it came anyway.

Truly, without my experience with X, without that Vesuvian destruction that altered my record, that song that would play if anyone would apply pressure with the right instrument---without that, I would not be able to understand what it feels like to be in another place, another world, separate from everyone else you are my world and I should be yours, he says as he tightens the ties that bind, nor would I be able to appreciate difficulty in using language to communicate from that place. I would not be able to accept physical aggression on the job as calmly as one who has never experienced it. I would not be able to see behavior as communication as clearly as I do today.

I would not be able to understand the beauty of looking at something in a different way, in a way that looks for inherent goodness, rather than its flaws.
I would not be able to understand the chain of reactions that occur, the momentum one can achieve, when one chooses to look at something one way rather than the other way: yes to this, no to that.
I may be marked, but I won't replay the sounds of violence.
I've got capacity to be what is useful, and therefore, good: perhaps even beautiful.
And that's the good stuff: something from nothing, dear reader.
Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Again?
That's what new years are made of.
I wish the best of this one for you.

We'll End at the Beginning; or a Preview of Dancing with Sir Isaac

Maimed for Life, Yet Merciful

'I Have to Forgive Him,' Bowie Woman Says of Man Who Burned Her
By Keith L. Alexander

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 29, 2007; B01


Fire changes everything it consumes. But some flames, roaring and dangerous, are more difficult to extinguish.
Patricia Scales still cares for the man who tried to kill her, dousing her with gasoline as she sorted laundry in her bedroom and throwing a lighted cigarette lighter her way.
She still takes Terrance James's calls from the D.C. Jail, listening without saying a word as he cries and tells her that he's sorry.
She keeps dozens of his jailhouse letters to her and their 6-year-old son, Terrance Jr., known as Tank, in two dresser drawers in her bedroom in Bowie. She can't read them all. It tires her fire-damaged cornea.
And yesterday she asked the court to have mercy on this man who disfigured her for life. At the sentencing hearing in D.C. Superior Court was the first time Scales came face to face with James since the attack in December.
"He's my son's father," Scales, 46, said a few days earlier. "He was good. He just lost it."
But Judge Herbert B. Dixon Jr. had other thoughts. Calling the attack "deliberate and cruel," he sentenced James, 48, to 25 years for aggravated assault and malicious disfigurement.
Fire is increasingly a weapon of choice for enraged, jealous men trying to prevent the women in their lives from ending up with another man, domestic abuse experts say. They want the women to suffer. And they want to watch them suffer.
Yvette Cade of Clinton became a national symbol of domestic violence after her husband walked into a store where she worked and set her on fire two years ago. She often gives speeches on the topic.
But Scales does not want to be seen as another battered woman. In an odd and terrible way, she says, the fire has made her realize it is time to turn her life around. Time to give up the crack cocaine she smoked for more than 10 years. Time to plan for the future by enrolling in college and getting a real estate license.
"I am not a victim," she said. "I am moving forward."
She wants to put the case -- distinct from the man -- behind her.
"I have to forgive him to move on," she said softly, almost pleading. "If I hold on to that anger, it will keep me sick."
* * *
Crack was a big part of Scales's adult life, and her relationship with James.
After graduating from Bladensburg High School in 1979, she enrolled at a local cosmetology school. She didn't graduate but styled hair in her home while taking odd jobs doing clerical work.
She met James in 1999 when he delivered newspapers to her apartment building. It was the first time she had been seriously attracted to anyone since she had separated from her husband, Paul Scales. That marriage ended largely because of her drug problems.
At 40 and with a teenage daughter, Scales got pregnant, long after she had given up on conceiving again.
She and James stopped using drugs until Tank was a toddler, Scales said. Then she started using again, off and on.
James was a good father, Scales said. He reminded his son to do his homework, say his prayers and brush his teeth. He bought matching outfits for himself and Tank and attended Scales's family get-togethers. It doesn't make sense, she said, shaking her head: "I have to believe he didn't want to hurt me."
On the morning of Dec. 16, Scales was sorting laundry in her Benning Heights apartment in Southeast Washington. According to Scales's daughter, Taira, 16, James had come looking for Scales the night before. He told Taira he thought Scales was with another man. Actually, Scales said, she had been getting high with a female neighbor. Before James stormed out of the apartment that night, he grabbed a spare key, Taira said.
The next morning, Scales heard the key in the front door. James kicked in her bedroom door. He was carrying a can of gasoline. He threw the gas on her and lighted it.
Flames engulfed Scales's upper body. Pain shot through her body, she says, as if hot nails were piercing her skin. "I felt like I was being crucified," she said. James stood over her as she was burning, saying, " 'Who is in control now?' " she recalled, according to prosecutors.
Scales suffered second- and third-degree burns over 40 percent of her body. She has had 20 surgeries and is expecting to undergo at least two more. She spent a total of 5 1/2 months in the hospital.
Today, pink and brown scar tissue lines Scales's face, chest and arms. The marks trail down her back and legs. Her neck is covered with open sores from her scratching to ease the feeling of bugs crawling over her body, a result of skin grafts.
She has limited use of her left arm. Such simple chores as making her bed are a struggle with only one hand. She can't stand long in front of the stove to make Tank waffles. And she's awaiting a surgery that will widen her mouth to allow her to eat more comfortably.
Scales ingests 12 antibiotics and vitamins a day, paid for mostly by Medicaid. No painkillers because she's easily addicted. She steps into a cold shower 10 times a day and slathers on medicated lotion to cool her skin.
The walls in her house vibrate from gospel music. As each inspirational tune comes across the radio -- "Let Go, Let God" or "Silver and Gold" -- Scales sings along. The songs keep her from feeling sorry for herself, she said. Depression is always lurking. So is the desire to get high. She can't afford a visit from either.
* * *
Scales had always prided herself on her appearance. A photograph graces her foyer wall. In a portrait taken 20 years ago, she is smiling and looking over her shoulder, her doe eyes sparkling.
Looking in the mirror since December hasn't been easy. In April, three months after doctors removed Scales's bandages, an aunt, Frances Washington, visited her in the hospital. Scales was sitting on the bed, crying. Washington marched her niece to the mirror on the wall and made her repeat: "I am a beautiful queen. I am a beautiful creation that God has made. And God loves me so much." Both women stood there in tears. Then Scales laughed.
Family has become a calming salve in the months since she glimpsed relatives gathering around her bed in the burn unit at Washington Hospital Center.
Tank is her biggest protector. He climbs into bed with her to see if she needs anything. He rubs medicated lotion onto her back and arms. A talkative and energetic boy, Tank remembers the morning when he saw his mother on fire, his teenage sister screaming and his father standing nearby. "If I wasn't awake, I would have been hurt too," he said.
Scales is determined that Tank not grow up hating James. She doesn't disparage the father in front of the son. She wants to make sure that Tank doesn't feel guilty or ashamed of talking about his father. "No child should have to live with that," she said. "This is not his fault."
Some family members question why Scales isn't angry at James and why she even communicates with him. Scales says it's an expression of her faith.
"I don't understand that," Taira said of her mother's attitude, rinsing out a cloth that she presses on Scales's neck. "But my mother is still here. So that's what I focus on."
The fire that damaged Scales's eyesight, turning her world blurry, seems to have cleared a new path for her. She plans to become a real estate agent and attend the University of the District of Columbia. She's applied for Social Security benefits. She's sworn off crack and other illegal drugs. The only stimulants she relies on are nicotine and chocolate. She dreams of taking Tank to Disney World during Christmas break.
Meanwhile, for Scales, yesterday was about moving on. She stood next to Assistant U.S. Attorney George Hazel, wiping away tears as he read from a letter she wrote to Dixon: "I have to forgive him. But I'll never forget. God has a plan for him."
She walked back to her seat in the front row, and James swiveled his head to face her. Dixon ordered him to turn back around, eyes front.
"I was wrong," James said, tears streaming down his face. "I am sorry. Very sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. It hurts. I loved her. I still love her. I love my son and daughter."
Dixon gave James credit for his remorse, for pleading guilty and for having a "minimal criminal record." But his words were unsparing.
"These acts you committed were deliberate and cruel," Dixon said. "You intended to punish the victim, and you committed these acts in front of two children."
After Dixon announced his sentence, Scales slumped over in her chair.
"It's over," she said, walking slowly out of the courthouse.
She can now deal with her most immediate struggles.
"God saved me for a reason, and smoking crack is not the reason," she said. "I can't waste another minute or another day of my life."



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801755_pf.html

Neroli's Day Off; or Gimme Gimme Octopus

Today on my day off I thought I would return to writings about violence and the awareness of violence.
Somehow, while looking for a link about the Milgram experiment, I wound up watching videos from a Japanese children's TV show from the 60's.




My mind just works that way, sometimes, dear reader.
Doesn't it look like he cracked open a star pinata in the second video?
Hope you are having a great week---like a pinata, full of whatever is good to you.
(Fortune-cookie fortunes would be ever so lovely wafting down...)

A Visual Strategy Formerly Known as a Graphic Organizer; or, I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends, Redux

If you go here, and type into the box any word that you will spark, reflection; connection, isolation; violence: these were the first words that came to my mind you will see, dear reader, what I think is a representation of what we are all meant to be for one another: when sometimes words are just that; and yet again, they are entirely something more.

Yesterday, at the farmers' market, I saw lovely cheddar-colored cauliflowers, dusky dark leaves intact, furled. I thought instantly of my friends at Jugalbandi. So after a day of connections with family and friends, near and far, I set to making a simple subzi of golden cauliflowers, new red potatoes, and dark green leaves.
It's these simple little things that matter so much, that call out I'm glad to be here.
Thank you, dear reader, for all the good that you do in this world.
I'm glad you're here too.

It's a Fine Line Between Love and Hate; or, DIY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLCG5mNlxnI

I Guess I Was Always a Strange Little Girl; or You Know What They Say About Good Intentions

http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kahlo/kahlo34.jpg
A Few Small Nips. Frida Kahlo, 1935. Oil on metal. 38 x 48.2 cm. Dolores Olmedo Foundation, Mexico City, Mexico.

Sometimes we as human beings are our own worst enemies.

Sometimes, we think that if we are only good and patient, strong and determined---if we are these things, we will prevail against conditions that are not positive or healthy.

When we make this contract with ourselves and with the condition that we find ourselves occupying, we begin the process of losing control: we've turned against ourselves.

And so it begins: we paint ourselves into a corner.
That's where violence waits.
Shame is most obliging in keeping us there.
(It's only a few small nips: who are we to say otherwise? )
(Remember that the sky isn't really blue?)

It is good at biding its time; in fact, that is what ensures its success---sure and complete.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCgURAkrtY8

Some of us have never been lucky.
I've grown tired of waiting. I've fashioned my own luck. Now:
I'm one of the lucky ones.
Who are you?
And what sort of world do you wish to live in?
(Let's tell it like it is and live it as if it's already here.)

Why Doesn't She Just Leave?, Part Two; or, Multiple Views of the Same Problem

I didn't make it in time to intercept my son.

I needed to go back to the game of cat-and-mouse-sky-isn't-blue. Being the mouse, I was already at a disadvantage: being beaten black-and-blue (when I see someone bruised, even today, I can guage the timeline of their injury by the color of the bruising: it takes a decided sequence of color progression---greenish-yellow means you're almost home free), I was even more so. Unable to lift my arms even a little, unable to perform even the simplest of tasks (no cracked skull or socket, but the ribs: well, they weren't as lucky), in order to stay close to my son, to stay ready for the time we could literally escape, I had to return in the care of X.

And so it was X who would brush my hair; it was X who would feed me and the baby. It was X who dressed and undressed me; who laid me down, but not to sleep.

Why doesn't she leave?

Because sometimes she understands that she must maintain frozen: fixed in position, down in the trenches. It's a war of attrition.

And so they wait: holding patterns.

Children are worth the wait.

She knows this is the only thought that makes sense; and to have a thought that makes sense seems a secret luxury.

He knows this; he knows she is thinking this.

She knows she may only get one chance.

As does he.

Why Janey Can't Speak; or, This Is the Picture

Why Janey Can't Speak is, as I'm certain you recognize, a riff on that worn catch-phrase Why Johnny Can't Read: a catch-phrase that has come to be just that, a catch-all-function phrase, one that is as is rhetorical; one that assumes the listener or the reader receives it in the negative. It signals: something is not right here.(Why doesn't she just leave?)

This is the picture.

Any similarity to persons living or dead is entirely intentional.

Hospital photo circa 1992

Janey can't speak because she is coming out of shock, quite literally. She had awoken on the floor in the same place she finally came to rest the night before. So far this morning, she has convinced the person who did this to drive her to the babysitter and drop off the toddler the baby hit her with a hammer, he said as the babysitter peered at her through the windshield of the car and drive her to work. She went into shock before she could assume her place on the line. She got to ride in an ambulance. They cut her clothes from her to assess the extent of her injuries on the way. She's embarrassed by this. They know her husband did this to her. Perhaps that is why they don't also assess her for rape. It's just as well. She would have been even more deeply embarrassed by that.

She's met by a trooper upon her arrival to the ER. He stands over her; he wears his uniform. She's laid out on her gurney, dressed in a paper outfit. He's talking to her about pressing charges.

She's cold. She feels like death, literally; it's hard to concentrate on what he's saying. She's embarrassed to have a man there, a stranger: usually, she is not allowed to speak to anyone. To enforce this, there is no telephone at home; she is watched at work, and at home---even in private moments in the bathroom, to shower, to toilet---and sometimes she is bound. Talking to people has become painful and uncomfortable to her. Remember operant conditioning? She and those rats would have a lot to talk about.

Deep inside her head, at the tail of at what seems a long winding thought, in the deepest part of the nautilus shell that is her skull is it cracked? two young girls snapping gum and bantering back and forth about, of all things, boyfriends---this x-ray tandem-team will direct her to contort in fixed positions, face pressed against the glass, to determine this (it's not) she can hear and see and feel the minutes ticking by, becoming lost: she remembers before being loaded on the gurney that the plant management said they would stall him so that she could somehow get her son and get away. She knows that even if she understood, and had the energy, the force of will to engage with what the trooper was asking---she knew that it would cost time that she could not afford.

Time doesn't pay sometimes.

When you are in these kinds of situations, you are always choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. Your thinking becomes thinking that no one else can quite understand; it becomes response-cost thinking, save for the part about the cost being logically related to the response. You learn sometimes to agree that the sky isn't blue, because, well...it may result in less of a negative situation than insisting that it is.

We'll call that the devil in our two-option menu, as blue is reserved for that deep-blue sea.

So sometimes you decide what you can afford to lose; sometimes, more importantly, you decide what you cannot.

And that, dear reader, is why Janey can't speak.

Janey, of course, is me.

And as I dislike having the above image lingering in my mind, and the entire purpose of this month is to speak about hope and survival, I leave you with a different image:

Neroli, as drawn by Naples Yellow, 2007

And yes, dear reader, it is possible to be that happy.

We who survive are proof positive; you, dear reader, are our witness.

What Do Fleet, Massengill, and the Name of a Rush Album Have in Common?; or, My Apologies to Lee, Lifeson, and Peart

Something in me, dark and sticky

All the time it's getting strong

No way of dealing with this feeling

Can't go on like this too long

I'm digging in the dirt

Stay with me I need support

I'm digging in the dirt

To find the places I got hurt

To open up the places I got hurt

----excerpted lyrics from "Digging in the Dirt" by Peter Gabriel.

Tonight my county is beginning the observation of Domestic Violence Awareness Month a day early. The community event is called A Show of Hands.

For myself, the irony of naming the event after the easiest, and therefore, one of the most common weapons of choice in domestic violence situations is somewhat uncomfortable.I don't much care for the term domestic violence. It sanitizes it: pretties it up somehow.

For instance, in spoken language and in what is written on the package, an enema is just that: an enema; even the graphics on the box are generic, straightforward.

Yet a douche? It's feminine cleanser. The graphics on the box are most often limpid, flowery. Most importantly, those things aren't really of any use: a woman can actually do more harm to her body than good in using such a product.

Just tell it like it is: get rid of the crap; then leave well enough alone.

But I'm uncertain as to what to call it, this very specialized form of violence: a product of any silence that has ever met any violence against those perceived as weak---be it stranger-to-stranger; familiar-to-familiar. Putting words to things has never been my strongest suit.

But A Show of Hands?

Maybe my visual way of thinking is too informed by images of experience. I'll take good intentions wherever they may be found, dear reader; and really, we all help each other that way, don't we?

A Show of Hands

Hospital photo circa 1992

Nurses holding back hospital gown to show bruising---some of it taking the shape of the hand of the abuser.

Preview of Coming Attractions; or, ...Silence Is the Mother of Violence (Silent All These Years)

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month here in the U.S.
Here at neroli.108 we will not only observe this, but look at the topic of violence against women in total.
I'm going to be digging in the dirt.
I invite you to stay with me, dear reader:
most likely I will need your support.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do60c1OtEf4

Random Non-attachments; or, A Short Post

Pop culture has been a consistent source of amusement for me, particularly when it behaves as its name suggests: when it "pops" out of nowhere. You know me, dear reader---cognitive dissonance is one of my favorite jokes.
Madder was having one of his verbal episodes yesterday, on the way to the bathroom:

Man Raid, Man Raid---
the Dir-ty Bub-ble! the Dir-TY BUB-ble!
(repeats)

And, dear reader, if Frida coming in November doesn't already make that month extra-special, look what else does!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuiH9jzHr_U

And also: Myanmar is very much in my mind.

My faith practice asks me to see all these things as "pop."
Sometimes that joke just isn't as funny.

Namaste, dear ones, all.

The Importance of Being Earnest; or, Can You Hear Me Now?

Julian Schnabel Ethnic Type #14 1984 oil, animal hide, wax and modeling paste on velvet; 108 x 120 http://www.artcritical.com/DavidCohen/SUN98.htm

Ecstasy of St. Theresa Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1647-1652
Marble, height 150 cm
Rome, Santa Maria della Vittoria
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ecstasy_St_Theresa_SM_della_Vittoria.jpg

One of the things I enjoy about my friendship with the blogger Artist Formerly Known as Purple Worms is our ongoing dialogue about the nature of art, and the relationship of art to artist. We've been engaged in this topic, off-and-on, for several years now.
It never gets old.
So when I wrote an earlier post about kitsch in response to reading Howard Gardner's take on the matter, I was fairly confident that AFKAPW would definitely be game to engage in the matter. And so she did!

AFKAPW wrote about kitsch yesterday in response to my earlier post. She informs us as to the origins of the word, and all the cultural attachments that are both origins and results of the word's usage. Please follow the link to read; she is ever more erudite than I, and I therefore won't attempt to paraphrase her words.
In her conclusion, she ekes out the relationship, if any, of art to kitsch:
Is kitsch art? So that gets me back to one of my all time favorite paradoxes - trying to define Art. (Capital A art.) When push comes to shove, I guess I resolve the issue by narrowly defining what I believe to be art. FOR ME (please note that narrowing there),
Art must

1. Communicate some kind of message or meaning (The meaning may simply be that art in the past has been ovely wrought and fraught with meaning and I am protesting against this past idea or that art has ignored the craft of working carefully with its materials.)

2. It must have access to and address society and issues important ot more than one person (thus be seen or heard - if it stays in the bottom drawer - for me it is not art - it is creative expression.)

3. (And here is the one that upsets lots of my colleagues in the Art department) It must have ideals, and have more than a superficial level - it must communicate about something metaphysically important (yes the nature of art itself fits in this category) In short for me art must speak to truth, justice, beauty or some such form.For me this solves the problem of kitsch. If the object is superficial with no depth, then it is kitsch. Now we have the question of audience - for me - if there is a group that finds depth in the object (it has a social/societal component) it is art. Of course that doesn't make it good art, but it is Art.

As is our custom, her words are most thought-provoking for me.

So under these conditions, how do each of the works above measure up?
One is Bernini, one is Schnabel; each labeled as Serious Art: yet the frequency of the transmission, the style of the communication is very similar.

Or is it?

AFKAPW speaks to the referent.
Is the referent absolutely necessary?

If so, how can each of us agree to the referent? Perhaps one could agree with others that the best referents that Art may address are the examples that AFKAPW gives: truth, beauty, justice, or some such form. Yet if this is the case, does it not also seem appropriate that such referents, such ideals, by their very nature, need many ways to be spoken of, the proverbial elephant to the blind men?

She then writes that :
I get tremendous joy in kitsch and alas I have to report it is in a different way than my tender and compassionate friend Neroli finds kitschy joy. I am at heart a nasty and critical individual. While my generous friend Neroli joys in the abundance of feelings and its excessive expression in kitsch, I have to admit to enjoying it as Schadenfreude 9another one of those untranslatable German terms). May the universe forgive me, but I get a certain vindictive glee out of laughing at the grotesquely exaggerated nature of kitsch and looking down my nose at. I just can't quite escape that one-up-man-ship inherent in being an insider looking at the ostracized outsider. In short I am the worst kind of snob. While Neroli laughs with, I alas laugh at. Now I will go to my zabuton and try to meditate on the nature and necessity of compassion and yes after all that I still love kitsch and find it stupidly reassuring.

And it is here that my experience with kids on the spectrum of autism and pervasive developmental disorders comes to bear: my feelings and thoughts about kitsch have everything to with my life experiences and nothing to do with any positive character attributes; all of us have generousity and compassion.
Communication, in all its forms, has become more and more my focus of interest. When I first came out of the gates of early adulthood, I thought that art was my passion; since my experiences of living so long with violence and isolation, and the subsequent implications of their workings in living without them, I've come to understand that it is really communication(Perhaps that in and of itself could be a component of a working definition of art?), particulary outside of the verbal realms , that engages me. Working with autism has brought this fact into focus.


Often, our kids with autism will speak to the same kind of referent that our kids without autism do; yet will do it in such a manner that would appear, if I may, kitschy: they are often displaying behaviors that anyone would be able to produce, and would be considered socially exuberant, exaggerated, or without any congruency at all to situational context. Yet, these behaviors are communciation nonetheless.
To extend the metaphor: often, these kids will produce opulent velvet paintings when their general-education-population peers are producing Zen brushwork: both are happy responses to the same experience.
For example, I've known one little person that we'll call Naples Yellow. In response to a happy feeling, Naples would jump up and down, pigeon-toed, all the while with one arm half-extended to the front, elbow bent, as if drawing another person into a one-armed hug; the opposite arm extended out, its hand moving in rapid circles, hitting that one-armed-hug-hand on the downstroke to affect a rapid and rhythmic clap, all in time to the jumping.
The other students?
To continue the metaphor: once they understood that this was Naples' way of saying "I'm really happy about this," they made room to hang this baroque, kitschy work next to their own.

Generousity? Tenderness and compassion?
Children making room for one another, often despite the models given to them by less enlightened adults.
Arguably the best Art of all; art with a capital 'A.'
There's the makings of that kind of Art within us all; there's the means of receiving that sort of communication within us all; and there's most definitely room to hang it all on the wall.
You'll know it when you see it, dear reader.


http://handicraft.indiamart.com/gifs/velvet-painting.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Original_face_enso.jpg

To See or Not to See?; or, Preview of Equilbrium

http://www.thyroidmanager.org/Chapter13/13-text.htm

Figure 4. Nodule in isthmus of the thyroid which is "hot" on the sodium pertechnetate Tc 99m scan (left) and "cold" on the I131 scan (right).

After a pleasant morning with Big and Little Guys before their first day of school (side note: BG took my breath away when he came downstairs this morning. He made some extremely tasteful selections at TJMaxx---and looked quite handsome in dark Perry Ellis jeans, new black Chuck Taylors, light blue tee with a sky-blue-and-white-checked button-down shirt over---hair done just so. He's growing up so well, to take such pride in himself, that smile when he knows he looks great in clothes he not only chose, but bought with his own paycheck: it's a lovely thing to behold, and I'm happy for him), I went down to the coffee shop to see the old gang.
When I came home, I sat down at the computer to finish reading a review of the new Mr. Bean movie on the NYTimes website that I had begun before leaving to see Little Guy off at the bus stop (side note: LG took my breath away with the clarity and magnitude of his smile as he sat perched by the window, waving: I know he is always homesick the first few days of school, and that one of his strategies this year is to smile an extra-big smile when he feels this way; he's learning to figure out this thing called life on his own, and his brave little heart shown in his smile is a lovely thing to behold, and I'm happy for him). After finishing the review, I scrolled down the page, and saw a review for a film I'd not heard of: Descent, with Rosario Dawson, an actress I've always liked very much. The reviewer tells us that the movie is difficult to watch in its cruelty and violence, and that Ms. Dawson gives a magnificent performance, likening it to DeNiro's in Taxi Driver. The reviewer also wrote that, and I paraphrase here, Descent makes Irreversible seem not so terribly violent or cruel after all.

Dear reader, my relationship with violence has been an intricate one, and one that is difficult to articulate. Although violence has long been part of my past, it somehow still informs me; as if violence were a radioactive contrast, shot into my veins: but the half-life is an exceedingly long one. Or, alternately, it seems as if it is the stuff in me at a cellular level, those very atoms that wake up and spin to the larger magnet's tune in the MRI tube. When I read about the story of Descent, it is as if I am in the MRI, and I can feel the violence rise and move: excited, resonating.

Hidden is not the same as nonexistent; it's one of the first cognitive benchmarks we achieve as we grow.

It is because of this that I still will often feel strangely compelled to learn more about violence, and more specifically, how have other people dealt with violence in their lives, and what can I learn from it?
For sometimes, to continue the medical metaphor, one just wishes for the one pill to swallow that will Make It All Go Away; or at the very least, manage the symptoms.
And so sometimes, when confronted with things such as the movie Descent, I think that I should avail myself of the opportunity to learn something: to see that mythic story in another incarnation, to get a different picture, to affect a more fine resolution to the picture that already exists for me.
But what it comes down to, dear reader, is this: a film is a film, a story nonetheless. I've come to believe that it is not so much a learning experience for me to access such stories as it is a diversion, a distraction, from the telling of my part of the story: one of an infinite number of stories that make up this life, this world.
So I won't seek out this film. I can only voice my experience to you that violence is a potent substance, more problematic than one knows at a cursory glance, or even after much study.

It's a relatively new thing, in the scheme of things, to be thinking about my own story, this sequel, a follow-up to violence. Rather than listen to the recommendation of one who won't reveal an ending, only telling you that it is grim and shocking, it's a relatively new thing in the scheme of things to look ahead for the good stuff.

I'd highly recommend it.





http://www.mathworks.com/academia/student_center/homework/biomed/images/mri_fig2.gif

Considering the Feminine in Art; or, A Flip-book

Unicorn in Captivity, c.1505 www.metmuseum.org

Georgia O'Keefe: Hands with Thimble, Alfred Stieglitz, 1920 www.kameraclub.co.za

Madame X, John Singer Sargent (neroli's zoom), 1884 www.metmuseum.org

Self-portrait with Cropped Hair, Frida Kahlo, 1940 www.abcgallery.com

Judith I, Gustav Klimt, 1904 (neroli's edit) www.art.com

Mother and Child, Gustav Klimt, 1905 www.art.com

Red Tara Kurukulla www.exoticindiaart.com

L'invention de la vie, Rene Magritte, 1928 www.abcgallery.com

Departure, Max Beckmann, 1935 www.moma.org

Collective Invention, Rene Magritte, 1934 (neroli's edit) www.abcgallery.com

US Postal Service, sheet stamps of quilt's from Gee's Bend www.outsider-folk-art.org

Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel Duchamp, 1912 www.artofeurope.com

Birth of Venus, detail, Sandro Botticellli, 1485 www.art.com

Simhavaktra, Lion-faced Dakini www.exoticindiaart.com

Sky Above Clouds IV, Georgia O'Keefe, 1965 www.artci.edu

Ebbets Field is Dead; or, That's the Krump

In yesterday's post, I spoke with you about a simple joy that is available to all of us: laughter. That the laughter was considered to be part of bodywork by the kundalini kriya that I referenced was quite a pleasing idea for me, one that I find most welcome.

It is my wish for you, dear reader, to laugh, and laugh really well, mind you, at least once a day. (Did you follow the embedded Darth Vader link from that post? It's a secret vice, looking at those images. But most definitely good for a laugh.)

Dear reader, since I made a resolution here to you and to myself to practice the craft of writing, I feel compelled to write further on the subject of violence that I began earlier; for it is specifically because of the violence that I have received in the past that I have difficulty with words in the present.

The life that was mine in the past of violence was one wherein one of the most oft-cited reasons for the beginning of violence was the extinction of Ebbets Field.

How can one not develop a sense of humor, an appreciation of the finer points of What Is Funny, when such a thing as the loss of that field is the gravity that holds you to that place, that one place, without seeming recourse?

And in that place I was kept in solitary confinement, a party of one; with a maitre d', of course: one who was very taken with all manner of ideas, and the loss of elegaic beauty that was Ebbets Field one of the most consuming of many that consumed. Needless to say, dear reader, I did not have great opportunity to engage with other people; to have conversation about stimulating things, much less the mundane things.

Use it or lose it as the saying goes. So I lost it.

I managed to escape once. I made small talk with the driver of the taxi. I cannot begin to describe to you to this very day, dear reader, the thrill, the joy, the absolute wonder in being able to speak to someone about the weather. The weather.

But as in most of these situations, these engagements between opposing forces (cat and mouse), I made a strategic error, and had to return, in order to win the war; in this case, the safety and custody of my son. Needless to say my return necessitated further isolation, and more strenous treatment to permanently affix my position.

One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is that suffering, dukkha, is caused by our attachment to things. We don't always get what we want when we want it, and perhaps we never do get it. It causes us to suffer, and our suffering plays out in inordinate ways: we might seek comfort from our suffering by using alcohol, by becoming a workaholic, by taking what we want by force. Perhaps we might take out our suffering on others without meaning to do so.

Yet again, we might mean exactly that.

And in the receiving end of that situation, words have no currency for your survival. You would be surprised how quickly verbal intelligences fade when they have no validity.

Visualization (backyard tree, running free) and laughter (say what?!?) are, again, a most welcome pair, in most every situation one may imagine.

And so, dear reader, from upstream I can practice non-attachment.

I am no longer attached to Ebbets Field with the same old ropes, with the black, the blue, and the stench of confinement. No, I believe that my dukkha was my silence; my particular brand of samsara was to deny that the range of voice available to each and every one of us as humans was also available for me.

By virtue of my experience, of being cut off from what is considered the average day-to-day, I am practicing non-attachment. In the classroom, I do my best to always see a child as a child, and not as a diagnosis. I am more reminded to meet these students where they are at, and to do so every day: the range of voice available to each and every one of us is no less available to them, and happily so!

I am reminded of the value of other intelligences outside of the linguistic realm, and it is in these places that I can most often look to meet these special students.

Where we go from there is up to them.

Non-attachment seems difficult to practice.

I believe that it is most often a case of seeming more difficult than it truly is. And if it becomes difficult, well, then, I am reminded of a skit from the television show, MadTV. The sketch features a male and female pair of dancers, who perform in a style that is known as krumping. In each of the skits, someone is always put at a disadvantage, to which the rejoinder is: "that's the krump."

So, dear reader, Ebbets Field is gone. People dress up their dog as el luchador. Darfur burns. Kids with autism are kids, first and foremost.

You and I, dear reader, are free.

We can talk about the weather, or not.

We can laugh all day long at whatever we please.

And that's the krump.

Independence Day; or, How MI Theory Helped Save My Life

Visual/spatial intelligence
• Capacities to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations on one’s initial perceptions.
• End states: navigator, sculptor----Gardner, H., & Hatch, T. (1989). Multiple intelligences go to school: Educational implications of the theory of multiple intelligences. Educational Researcher, 18(8), 4-10.

A system that's neat and orderly and hast to keep struggling to fight off randomness, and when randomness inevitably leaks in, the system is thrown off. Being open to a certain level of randomness, on the other hand, allows it to work in your favor.----Abrahamson, E., & Freedman, D. (2006) A Perfect Mess. New York: Little, Brown, and Company

Dear reader, please know that I do so appreciate your visits here. Such seemingly small acts of kindness are most important, and I just wanted to begin here today by thanking you. You do have the power to impact for such good in the world, and limitless opportunities in which to do it.

I've provided a link to an article speaking about the suicide of a young man, David Ritchenson. He was the victim of an extremely hateful and brutally violent act. He testifed before Congress this April during hearings concerning a proposed hate-crimes bill. He jumped to his death from a cruise ship earlier this week.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4941295.html

Mr. Ritchenson's story resonated with me. Simply put, I have been on the receiving end of violence. I express it this way, as it is one of the most apt ways I might convey to you in words what occurred. Violence was put forth, and I received it, completely. And this is the thing about receiving something so completely: you have room for nothing else; this, this becomes what is your sustenance.

Perchance, maybe, just maybe, you had digested just enough to make a little room for something different, something good. You can scarcely believe it's there, that little space; it's a secret, you see, like a little life itself within you. Furtively, because, really, it's dubious how long that little space will remain; it's in doubt how long you can keep it, really---you reach for something good, just a little, for there's such a small space, you can only manage a little sliver: and violence hands you your order (but it's not really, it's a dis-order: it's violence's order), and shoves it down to cram that little space full.

It is considered best practice to fill the tea vessel with boiling water before brewing the leaves with fresh, hot water. A hot vessel is considered to bring forth the most fragrant tea.

The method that I eventually deployed to tailor the disorder of violence so that I might stomach it without its poisoning me completely was to visualize other things whilst the violence was active and open. It's not a new method, for many of us in these situations, and indeed, situations far removed and in much happier light, do use visualization techniques.

So whilst, say, I assented to the perpetration of most abjectly humiliating and violent acts lest my-then-toddler child be taken away for the night in a car piloted by one in an alcoholic stupor; or, say, being restrained and used as an ashtray, I would smile, picturing completely in my mind such things as say, the sunlight and shadow coming down on me as I climbed the large tree in my childhood home backyard. Or my grandmother's plump raisin cookies, always wrapped in waxed paper in pairs, flat sides pressed together (like two hands, like namaste) and presented with simple, complete affection. And so I would smile; and so violence would spit in my face or decide to go an extra hour, or light another cigarette.

Who is to say what is a good way to cope with violence and what is not a good way? And does it matter if the violence came suddenly and left, or if the violence was sustained over time? When I wrote in a previous post about wishes that one could communicate with the future in some way, so that the message was, hey, this is the picture---dear reader, I was thinking very much of myself at this time. How I would love to be like Admiral Janeway, and tell that person what will happen. That little boy so fiercely protected is now so grown and smart, so gifted, so himself. That another little boy would come, marvelous himself, with a marriage that is not picture-perfect, but perfectly suited, to someone I saw in my dreams long ago as a child. Summer nights sleeping out with the stars and the crickets and the rain on the tent lulling us all to sleep. That there are classrooms full of lively, funny, wonderful kids. Good friends, great friends. That this person's life will be so different, so good, so full of flavor and sustenance.

Would that have been true for Mr. Ritchenson. I would have loved to have been able to tell him.

I truly believe, my friends, we have infinite chances. We do have infininte possibilities to find what we need, what we love; who we need and who we love: to find home.

"Set a course...for home."

Captain Janeway, Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager)











http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html