LIFE itself is reason and meaning enough for anyone

A version of this column of mine appeared in January of 1994 in the Ridgefield Press.

There is a strange nocturnal tendency at the end of the year. The whirl of Christmas celebrations complete, children in bed, we sit exhausted amid holiday debris. We catch our breath, count our toes and our debts. By the tree’s schmaltzy twinkle, we measure the weight of the passing year and ponder the meaning of our lives.


Apparently weighty matters ripen more rapidly after dark. Only a few moments ago, with eyes clamped determinedly shut, mind still in the spin cycle, I restlessly stretched out my right arm, As I did so an odd intruding thought crowded out the annual clamor of self-assessment.

How smooth, that movement of arm; how incredible and improbable the sensations of each muscle moving, perfectly coordinated and alive... I sat straight up in bed. How strange, how amazing, I thought every human being over all the Earth, whatever language, religion or economic reality, every one of them partakes in this same phenomenon - life.

We have life; we are life; yet we spend life arguing about what life is. We are alive yet we can’t agree on life’s cause or goal.

Over centuries, humanity has fermented a primordial sea of argument. Ideas and needs that simmer like soup, boiling over often into political and personal violence. Despite the beauty of  each season, despite the sincerity of our endeavors, despite our common aliveness, we have never once agreed on the scheme of things. But we carry on anyway. Each year people fall in love. Children are born. New projects begin. The status quo decays. Revolutions are launched. Ideas take hold. Countries are founded, technologies invented, branches of knowledge expanded, fallacies debunked, empire disassembled. New fallacies, new empires arise.

Apparently life itself, full of vigor and promise, is enough to work with, this life which contains its own wordless philosophies, which is astonishing - both to philosophers who ponder it and scientists who study its mecahnisms.

And being alive is like tasting good soup. No amount of probing the roster of ingredients, no amount of pleading with an imagined chef or  picturing vegetables being chopped, no amount of accurate measurement, timing, skimming or stirring -- none of these will convey the wonder of savoring a single spoonful.

Whatever life’s cause - each moment is precious, complex, intricate. This is true whether there is one loving god, an army of indifferent gods or no god at all. It is true whether there are angels and archangels, a living gaia, a sentient universe or only DNA struggling for survival in chaotic cycles of energy and time. None of these concepts alters the immediate reality of my arm. Or your arm. Or my brain or your brain. Or the cacophony of our conscious minds swirling with divergent and conflicting thought every hour of the night and day.

As an experiment, observe yourself inwardly for a moment. Mentally slip thought the side door. Stand just out side your stream of thought and watch the flow. Listen to your heart beating, to the steady rhythm of your breathing. Notice the faint odors of familiar things without labeling them or thinking about them, simply be them all. You are them all already. It sounds simple, inane even. But this process of simply observing reveals the rich texture of our existence.

Perhaps, as life is what we have in common, we might in the new year contemplate and celebrate the life inherent in our competing arguments. this network of vigorous, argumentative (letter-to-the-editor-writing) life -- over all the Earth and anywhere else it night be found -- this life itself is reason and meaning enough for a thousand philosophers.

So live every day of this new year. Remember the soup. Some days may be nourishing and hearty. Some may be watery and bitter. Whatever life’s taste, savor every second.

Scultpture reclines with glass of milk

This sculpture was photographed, not next to a granite pillar, but on my desk next to a glass of milk. It's all low res, shot with an early computer cam, but pretty accurately shows the work which is in unfired clay. Drop it in a bucket of water and its gone. The problem is, I kept several different types of clay. Since I am off-again, on-again at my various hobbies, by the time I made this piece, I had already lost track. I am fairly sure it can be fired, but the proper cone is unknown. Organized people would label all this stuff as they work. I suppose I will have to talk to someone knowledgeable and get some advice on this. It's been curing for over ten years.

Life drawing aids the eye

From the Metaphoratorium Gallery

This is a scanned section of a sketch I did during a studio class with a live model. Have taken quite a few of these helpful sessions, one at Western Conn State University, and several each at Weselyan University (in the GLS program), at Wooster Community Art Center, and also at the Housatonic Art League. The models have been different sizes, sexes, ages and races, in various states of clothed and unclothed. When you are trying to understand the relationships of the different parts of the body and how they move - a live model is priceless. I also like to watch dance classes and dance on TV for the same reason.

head in hand watching the world roll

I have always liked this impossible photo of a head I made in Sculpty. No, I didn't use a mold.

I've made a series of heads, some mounted, some painted. To the right is the sculpture in its original flesh-toned material. Some how though, I prefer the black and white photo.

Oil Pastel: Overwhelmed

For some of us, holidays feel a lot like this sketch — we sit quietly while other folks race around acting crazy, trying to match some past holiday ideal. It's done in oil pastel on a 5 by 7 inch index card. (low buget materials.) For me, this year was a relatively good holiday, less stress. Today is work day though, with more than enough stress for everyone.

Another Christmas, Another Religious War

It's Christmas morning and a new religious war is afoot between Christians in Ethiopia and Muslims in Somalia. Religion all around seems more a cause of war than a source of comfort. This photo is one not used for a story I did recently on Hanukah. A Reformed Congregation Rabbi, a warm and caring person and a great interviewe, is reflecting on and reflected in a display-case of seasonal items. Hanukah celebrates the 're-taking' and re-dedication of the Temple by the Maccabees -- who mounted what this Rabbi called 'guerrilla warfare' to do so. Is there any religion with a truly peaceful history? I doubt it, since religion is the invention of mankind, and man is a dangerous and aggressive animal. (Women I do not exclude you here....) We are an animal species full of loving kindness and also full of savage craft. Selah.

Doodles - flotsam and jetsam of the mind

Moved from the Metaphoratorium Gallery

This pic was drawn in MS Paint during a lunch hour while I was working as an office temp. Doodling can keep you at a safe level of sanity. What sanity is or what a safe level of it might be, is still unknown... No minimum daily requirement has been set by government testing, nor written up by any lobbyists as yet.
--- Mar Walker

XMAS - The whirl, the blur, the pause, the peace

by M. M. Walker
(This Christmas column of mine ran in two small newspaper quite a few years ago. It's also been posted on my website.)

The Christmas holiday comes in so many subtle flavors. What does Christmastime mean to you?

Snow, twinkle lights, the scent of pine boughs, mistletoe, mulled cider, spiced eggnog, apple wood on the fire... Family caring, togetherness, visitors, carols, candlelight services, Christmas parades, children's smiles, warm fuzzy feelings about goodness in the world, hope... Tree chopping, trimming, broken ornaments crunching underfoot, getting the lights right, the tinsel straight, the cat/dog/baby tipping the tree... Shopping, fretting, having no money, worrying they won't like it, that it's not good enough, wrapping, scotch tape stuck on your shoes, on the cat...

Rushing, children's demands, store after store after store, wrapping, wishing it were over, charging it with regrets, refusing to admit to the kids/neighbors/ in-laws/your mother that we can't afford it, and paying for it next year at 18 and a half percent... Crowded grocery stores chopping vegetables, raw cookie dough and lumpy gravy, eating too much, or not having enough to eat, not having enough to give, getting a handout and hating it... Loneliness, wishing you had somewhere to go or someone special, wishing you didn't have to go, wishing the company would just go home... Desperately missing people who are not around -- who moved, stayed behind, who deserted or simply died, who linger in vivid memory of past Christmas...

House cleaning -- before and after, irrelevant preparations, celebrations followed by aching weariness and stomach pains because you're in debt... Wishing just once he'd wash dishes instead of buying cologne, self-pity, reminiscing, reverie, foolhardiness, cheer, remorse... The make-it or break-it retail season, profits or maybe losses, precarious prosperity vs chapter 11, lasting til summer vs letting people go in January. Knowing you'll have to and hating it.. Bills, bickering, more bills, endless Charlie Brown specials, meaningless, fleeting, insincere budget-busting sentimentality...

WAIT JUST A MINUTE HERE!

Whoever you are, however good or bad it is for you this year, go right now, this minute, find a someone you care about and give them a hug, because that's the thing that will get you through. And if there isn't a friend or relative, or acquaintance that you care about, at least say something friendly and polite to the very next person you see. If you're home alone, call someone up and wish them well. It's a start.

And if you haven't got any gifts to give, remember that the gift-giving part of Christmas, like the evergreen tree, is just a good old pagan tradition. The Christmas part is where the diety gave something to men. If you are a christian of whatever variety, that's the real meaning of Christmas. And while you're getting glassy-eyed with religious exultation, just remember that us atheists, pagans, cynics, n'er-do-wells and even those democrats and republicans -- they, we all need hugs too.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Millstone Metaphors - nuclear power woes

Nancy Burton, the Green Party candidate for Connecticut attorney general, has racked up some milage campaigning under the season’s crisp canopy of leaves
She’s been driving around hauling a goat shed, bales of fragrant hay and three lop-eared nibbling goats, pragmatists every one.

Aside from promising a chicken in every pot, it’s hard to imagine why a politician would want to make campaign appearances with a farm animal. But Burton, who’s eccentricities, and environmental intensity are well known, also has method.

Katie, the mother goat in her caravan herd, lived on a farm not far, five miles or so, from the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant, and gives milk laced with Strontium-90. With Burton at the left is one of Katie’s two kids, photographed on a bright sunny day in Georgetown. Watching this small family, it’ was easy to think about the future.

As Burton shepherds her “Strontium-90” goats around on tour, as she makes campaign speeches, her goal is to bring attention to the problem of nuclear energy’s aging infrastructure, which like the national debt, isn’t going away in just one generation.

Burton says the problems include:

• repeated releases of radiation,


• the lack of a no-fly zone over Millstone,


• a whistle-blower’s revelation that the company routinely disables the plant’s security system because of its hyper-sensitivity.


• Millstone’s overfilled spent fuel pools, (I read a report about this problem ten years ago in Time Magazine. It was chilling even then.) kept that way because of the failure of the federal government to establish a long-term nuclear waste storage facility.


• Above ground storage of nuclear waste made possible by the declaration by the government that closed reactors can be used as storage facilities. (Millstone 1 is closed, for that matter Connecticut Yankee in Haddam Neck is closed too and is still a storage site for spent fuel. )


• a cancer hot zone moving up the Nyantic River from Millstone

To consider the positions of the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone visit mothballmillstone.org.

---- Mar Walker

Hillstead: Short Poem Workshop with Dick Allen

Dick Allen at Hillstead (an old article from the Metaphoratorium)
Not sure what the date on this should be...

after a reading years later

A grey day at best - it was the short pithy poetry that was bright and airy at the Oct 30th Short Poem Workshop at the Hillstead Museum.

The workshop opened right on time with a full line-up of 15 poets come to investigate the short poem.

To gear up for the day, there was strong coffee, followed by an opening reading by Mr. Allen. While we were all familiar with his long poem style - the short ones were a wonderful surprise. He read eight or nine and introduced each one with an explaintion of its derivation revealing all sorts of tips and tricks in the process.

Besides the reading, Mr. Allen shared handouts - sheets of those short poems and also sheets of some of his favorite classic short poems. Then the attending poets shared one of their own poems in a round robin reading. Each was primped and critiqued by both the group and the guru.

Halfway around the circle and it was time for lunch. There was homemade vegetable chili for sale out of a crockpot - just $3 a goodly bowl- hot, hot and scrumptious! To go with the chili was homemade bread and pesto spread. Apples and homemade chocolate chip cookies were available for desert. To go with these delights for the palate - there were delights for the mind - a table of poetry books for sale.

After lunch it was straight back to work, until each attending poet had benefited from a critique and encouragement. Then, there were more handouts - the characteristics of the sort poem, typical types of short poem, advice on tone, on submitting work for publication, all delivered with delightful humor. Then came an on-the-spot writing exercise and time to share the surprising results.

For myself, I found the advice helpful and the company interesting - and you just never know what you might find at one of these workshops. Besides the writing ideas, I heard a Tibetan Singing Bowl sing for the first time, brought and rung by Nadia Light who wanted to write about it. All in all, the atmosphere, the advice of a master poet and the good supportive company made for a wonderful day. I signed up the upcoming Gray Jacobik workshop at the same venue - but at the last minute found I couldn't go. SIGH.

For information on upcoming workshops write to Joy Pachla

---- Mar (Mistryel) Walker

The Mysterious Arranger - eccentricity and aging

At the far end of the hospital room, an 85-year-old waif paces in slow motion.

“Someone is making decisions about me everyday, and I'd like to know who it is," she says in an anxious voice, eyes lowered. She has outlived several sets of associates and two careers. She's a PhD, a shrink, now with only passers-by to analyze, an eccentric former opera singer, without an audience.

"Sit down here and talk to me," she says tapping on the chair seat with her cane. "You know I am a trained professional," she adds. I vaguely wonder if it’s true that those in the psychiatric profession undertake their calling to understand their own complexities.

I am visiting a relative who is ill, who happens to occupy the other bed in this hospital room, not here for an hour's advice in trade for $90.

"You know four people in that bed have died in this room while I have been here", she confides, pointing to the bed where my mother sleeps. Oh swell, now there is something else to worry about. Is this frail woman delusional or homicidal or has she been here that long?

Later she complains that the hospital has held her against her will for six weeks while her relatives try to close-up her house. They say she is a little odd, artistic, musical, academic - lives in piles of papers in creative disarray.

I think of my desk, which bears a striking resemblance to a landfill. I think of my collection of broken glass and mirror bits (each with an interesting shape) which someday might get glued together as oddball sculpture. I think of piles of things that often develop on the floor which seem to persist for months. I am 55 and still able to throw out unwelcome busybodies. But what about when I am 80?

There is a tyranny to the housekeeping expectations of relatives and social workers. The unconventional elderly who have lived full, intelligent lives as eccentrics, can be as easily harmed as helped by their efforts. The system itself has no understanding of lives dedicated to the practice of art, to nature, or to some other all-encompassing purpose, or lives that have for decades been happily, well, messy.

Life began in a messy puddle that might have been prematurely wiped up if some authority were running the show. The human race spread over the face of the globe entirely without indoor plumbing so who are these folks trying to kid...

The mysterious arranger is a case worker with a rule book. May the fates shield us from her gaze...

---- Mar Walker