A Plea for Clarity

We are done with the elections, and I and many of my friends and family are breathing sighs of relief that the campaigning is over. I couldn't believe my ears this morning, then, when I woke to the voice on the radio station saying it was time for the pundits to analyze the voting trends, and for the Republican party to begin courting the Latino vote in earnest. My mind knotted in sudden frustration and anger.  Will we as a nation ever learn?

We have been assaulted by every kind of overt and devious stream of propaganda for at least the past year in preparation for our day of selection. Here is a website of information on how societies propogate the passing of persuasive information among us: Propaganda. (Oh darn. That's not poetical alliteration: that sounds like a tongue-twister.) Scroll down to the "Techniques" section and you will find a long list.  Do you recognize any of these as having been used in your education on your voting choices?  I can verify many from ad hominem on down the list in my exposure to political campaigns and see them used by both major political parties. And believe me, I recognize my own susceptibility. Those who sell us our policies know advertising tactics very, very well.  Their spiels can zip right by our logic.  Joseph Conrad said it well, "He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense."
("A Familiar Preface." The Collected Works of Joseph Conrad)

I long for a change.  I long for our parties to come clean, but I sincerely doubt they can, because they are not clean.  I may be a bit crazy myself, but I am nowhere near the kind of crazy it must take to want to be President in this day and age. Perhaps our candidates actually like allowing their personalities to be completely distorted into something the "American people" want. Is that called masochism in psychological circles?  We vote in a swamp consisting of monetary greed and power hunger. Voting is like trying to wrestle a writhing boa constrictor.

So, if the system can't be run through some kind of water purifier, can we start elsewhere?  I believe that one of the most important tasks a teacher could assume during his or her years of teaching is to show our young people how to recognize at least the basic forms in which propaganda comes.  We learned these in our junior high.  I watched during a parent-visiting day when my son's elementary school  "gifted" class learning to evaluate these techniques. Why can't this be mandated in all classrooms?  It's a fun process--learning to take apart all speeches and advertising to look for the methodology being used to persuade.  This does not force the teacher's opinion on the student, but helps them look for kernals of truth in what's being said. Or, on the other hand, lies obscured as truth. And if it's too much to ask of teachers, can we at least ask any parents that are familiar with the process of indoctrination to pass on their knowledge of the techniques at home, so that their children may teach others to look at things more closely? To question what they hear before adopting it as truth? Perhaps the ability to do so is a more important qualification for voting than a photo i.d..

Letting Go

Seven years after I moved to Maine we are cleaning out the Pennsylvania house.  The "For Sale" sign has appeared at the bottom of the drive at long last. Last week I went down to dispose of the personal belongings I still had there in closets and bureaus and piles. Keep and take to Maine, charity pick-up, and throw. The piles grew unbelievably, especially the last two. Once-precious possessions now seemed only pretty regrets. Who was that woman who collected a houseful of country kitsch? Surely she is not I.

Our grad-school daughter, Anne, came in from Pittsburgh to join me in the process. Her room was a collection of childhood memorabilia mingled with remnants of her teens and early adulthood. The woman she has become was shaped by experiences now represented by things, but she was able to let go of so much with amazing grace. The art projects, the jewelry box with the ballerina, the college textbooks--all filled her get-rid-of cartons.  Her godmother, my best friend, helped with the last afternoon of sorting, and her laughter and understanding and ability to carry gave the job a cathartic glow. Anne keeps the memories of laughter and tears cried in that room, but the husks of the experiences are gone.

Why does getting rid of things feel so freeing?  We are weighted by our possessions. We are tied to the person we were at any given moment by what we made, bought or were given on the occasion. Fear, however, lurks underneath the pushing away. Will I remember who I was? Do I need this as a memorial? Movement becomes possible as we shrug off the old "comfortable." Change moves like light into newly exposed dark spaces. The potential for growth and clarity, and the sense that we can only travel forward when we leave the past behind flood into the cleared rooms of our minds and hearts. We will not find the promised land until we journey on. Home is not, as I once thought, only in one particular place. It is not in a family frozen in the past, but in the roots that stretch across the land, underneath like the giant fungi of the forest. My poet friend says that one side of the woods has rain, and it is felt by the cells on the other side.

Eric, the man who lives so lightly on the earth, but whose emotional strings are tied to Three Mile Run Road, has yet to tackle his room. I suspect that he will have the hardest time deciding what to let go, and yet I may underestimate his abilities. Perhaps he will garner a new song from the experience.

It is strange to think that Neil is living in a house from which the other family members are erasing themselves. The rooms will finally be as organized and uncluttered as he has always wanted them to be. But though he often culls his clothing, he, too, will have to begin the task of choosing what to take and what to let go. He is a firm believer in documenting every decision and has the lists and piles of papers to prove it. The small candles on every flat surface in the home may represent his need for light. Some piece of clothing in every closet in the house--is that symbolic of staking claim? And his mother's ashes in the bedroom closet. Is he perhaps waiting for a time when retiring from business concerns gives him the space in his life to mourn her properly and let her go? We must be careful when letting go that we remember love.

Another Poem From My FB Postings

Insomnia

by Susan Schwan 

9/2010

Psalm 134:1
Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who minister in the night in the house of the Lord.NIV

Psalm 22:3
But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. KJV

Psalm 30:5
...weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. NIV

Praise the Lord, all you who watch in the night.
You musicians, poets, prophets to whom 

the threads of waking dreams come.
You who witness the wing-tip brush of angels over deathbeds, 

You scientists who comb the dark air for elusive intuition 

to bandage the wounded, hemorrhaging world.
You peacemakers, praise. You hungry children.
All you worried mothers and fathers.

O Praise the Lord from the silence,
from the deafening, claustrophobic truckload of dumped regret
which is delivered by the night-shift.
(I’ve heard the nocturne of the moving back-up beep
as I lay in my sweat-filled bed.)

O Praise the Lord, for the voice of praise is filled
with the mysterious energy of God, and
with the company of your dear and hallowed dead,
now almost visible under streetlight splashed upon your wall,
you build a vibrating web with which
God catches every tear, every sob, every whispered sigh
and with the inexplicable alchemy of what is,
turns it into laughter.

Posting An Older Poem

I've decided to copy to this blog some of the poems I've put up on FaceBook, in anticipation of possibly leaving the network behind at some point.  This first one comes at the wrong season, but as Winter seems to have laid claim to coming Spring days with snow and more snow in March, perhaps it's not SO out of place.


This came after reading Debbie's comment on the Long Night's Moon, a term for the full moon before Winter Solstice.

Long Night’s Moon

What magic casts December’s first full moon?
Tide of moving stone,
shadows on the silver frost,
distant howl of Winter predators,
a flashing glimpse: hindquarter of the wounded year. 
Sister, draw your breath.
Husband, quickly close the door. Come fire-close.
Soon, soon December turns her haggard face,
shows the blue twin of her glistening eye,
too weak to hold her long night
against the strengthening sun.

Susan Schwan
(draft 12/2/09, ed. 3/6/12)
)

Faces Getting Blurred on FB

I have spent the last fifteen years of my life finding friends in the Cyber world.  It all started with AOL, but quickly moved on to the little forum created by Dougie MacLean for fans from all over the world to have conversations about his music. It was called "The Land" after his own environmental concerns, but we could talk about whatever we wanted.  We discussed things on that forum that deepened me, made me want to learn about sustainability, let me see that the world from a different perspective than privileged American.

"We became known to each other as "Landlings."  As we discussed Dougie, current events, social trends and even personal issues, we bonded in ways that seemed incredible to me. We waited (with chuckles) for the world to end with the dawning of 2000 in one friend's home country of NZ, and the world turned every mountain range toward the sun with all of our computers still working.

We visited each other from across states and oceans.  I was able to give some support to a friend from the south when her sister was involved in a serious accident and taken to a hospital not too far from my home.  We had the meet-ups at Dougie concerts, shared secrets and much, much laughter. We had Friday on-line parties, where all who could stopped in for some craic. In many ways I became closer to those people than some of the people I dealt with on a day-to-day basis.

We moved from Dougie's forum to other set-ups as it became expensive and time-consuming for our host to maintain "The Land." Though most of the settings were too hard to stick with, I have remained in contact with a group of them to this day.

Which brings me to comment on the new world of on-line friendships.  I can't speak about all current trends.  The only vehicle I have signed on to has been FaceBook, largely to stay in touch with young family members scattered across the globe.  I am now very seriously considering leaving it.

First of all, instead of a forum for friendships to continue, FB is a consumer-trending pollster for all the world's sellers.  Every "like" is tracked; every conversation is mined for target words.  Do I feel paranoid?  Yes.  Every application I use on my computer these days has the motto, "We are concerned for your privacy" on their home page.  They just don't tell you how much they are concerned about breaking into your likes and dislikes so they can sell you "better" politicians, news geared to your brand of thinking, advertise products to you that have been gauged to be your particular tastes. How very kind of them to do your thinking for you.  If that's what you want.

I do know almost every person on my friend-list, but I know people that have friended hundreds of people on the basis of a moment's acquaintance. I don't know about you, but I don't consider someone I've just met a friend, unless we've had a chance to really bond over something.

This is all suggesting to me what so many have been aware of for a long time.  Our relationships are superficial today.  I know that one friend ate a banana for breakfast, but I don't know that she is aching over a strained relationship with her husband.  I can tell this young person is beating the latest computer game, but not that he is unemployed and scared to death.  I can see the latest catch-phrase poster that had momentary meaning to someone, but not that they have been studying and learning or have deepened spiritually...or that they are this close to having a nervous breakdown. People spit their opinions at me, but whenever I am drawn out to make a reply, I regret it.  A status can't reveal to you my whole state of mind, nor is it meant to.

An e-mail can.  Better yet, a nice long letter can.  Or a phone call. But I am busy!  You are busy!  And then I spend so much time looking for clues from friends and family on FB in my spare moments, that I no longer have time to write that letter.  I look for the superficial reassurance that we are all still alive.

Maybe it's time to say goodbye to the friendships that really aren't worth a nice, long chatty letter or phone call.  I may miss the updates, but if I begin to work at it, I might regain a depth that I have been missing since I became a FB friend. After all, what is a momentary fact worth, if I cannot put a context to it?

Stretching Out the Light

I believe I am the only person in my neighborhood who has left the Christmas candles in my windows.  Oh, the tree is down. The little glitters of decoration are tucked away in the plastic bins and stored in the basement. That picture of Santa and my framed art cards from other years are tissued and boxed to be brought out next year.  I loathe to take down those lights with their ability to sense the gradient of evening dark and turn themselves on in time.

Solstice is over.  I know the days are getting longer by tiny increments, but they are still short.  I notice it even more, now that the holiday visits have ended and the music is no longer played. I miss both family and beautiful Alleluias. How comforting those lights are as I pass through a darkened room, still on when I head to bed. They are such small lamps, only a few watts of electricity for each bulb, but they open whole rooms to me. I notice something the cats have overturned, the play of the shadows of furniture and plants. They shed a friendly familiarity.

Oil lamps, torches, firelight, candles--light is bound into human history and achievement. Darkness is fecund with dreams and plans, but doing requires light. We echo the retired sun in our work and respite places so we can make seedling dreams come true.

Candles in the window are a long tradition in my family. While one brother was away from our family, my mother left the welcome-home candle in a strategic window for him for many years, as mothers have done through the centuries to light the way of the wanderer or maybe Christ himself.  Perhaps I want to leave these candles lit for all my loved wanderers to find their ways back home.