"Room"

I have recently read the book "Room"by Emma Donnahue twice,(well once by listening as hearing a story oultoud adds new dimensions and once actually reading the book).I was immediately drawn to the plot that is told in the voice and insights that only a five year old little boy can know ,feel,witness and recount in the story of his life.Jack lives in "room" with Ma.Ma was kidnapped early one morning on the way to college by a man,Old Nick, who is recluse of sorts.He has no real human connections .He is portrayed as base, sadistic,selfish,inhumane, one who must feel utterly powerless, not cared for, living on the fringes ,probably suffering his own forms of abuse that we know nothing of in this story.Jack is born in captivity in a sound proof,hermetically sealed and locked metal shack somewhere in Old Nick's backyard.Ma is visited upon by Old Nick as his sex slave ,and Jack is the product of one of such visits to Ma.Ma births Jack completely on her own. She never lets Old Nick ever cast his eyes upon the child.Jack sleeps in a wardrobe of sorts and all he knows of Nick are the creeky noises in Ma's bed on the nights of Nick's visit which unnerve him, the Sunday treats that Nick brings which are basically not gifts,but the essentials for their survival.
One of the most compelling themes in this story is not the actual story, but the description of the delicate ,intricately woven bond that grows between mother and child. The story for me really is about what happens between a mother and child when they live in a world that all they have is each other.Life can happen that way without the tortures of an actual kidnapping.Sometimes life happens,so that we create our own "rooms" of sorts or for a whole series of factors beyond our control we end up in a room of sorts. What happens as one raises a child in a room all by themselves with no one else around really.This type of parenting , asks of the parent to become a wizard of sorts, becoming,being the entire world for that child.It requires the capacity to be yourself , but many other selves that one may not even know yet,so that this child has exposure to the complexities of human interaction beyond the ordinary that we know of ourselves.It is likely that the bond between such a dyad is so tight,that extraordinary circumstances must ensue to entangle this web and eventually differentiated life apart from each other can exist.
In "Room" , the extraordinary must happen in order for both Jack and Ma to become free and ultimately separate.Ma asks of Jack eventually to be the vehicle that realizes their eventual escape that she conjures up in her mind.Jack is called upon at a tender age to hold onto all that he has learned from Ma in "room" to realize their actual escape. For me, the story has ultimate hopefulness and embodies the message that we ultimately need our separateness , our unique strengths that we are endowed with ,so we can be free to be creative and do great brave things in this world.Living in the cocoon of exclusive dyadic mirroring is a prison that promotes stasis and regression.It is the opposite of creativity.Young children and their parents must leave the room where all that exist is the safe thwarting boredom of each other.Emma Donnahue speaks to the fierce strength and belief in one's ability to creatively survive against all odds.
I will be periodically posting some quotes and my comments on this masterpiece of a book that in many ways speaks to the unfolding story of my life .....

Peeling off...thus,truer

The Moon in Time Lapse
by David Rivard


The moon in time lapse sliding over skyline
the way a remote frisbee might wheel through air
as slowly as a banjo once floated across the wide
Missouri River in my mind when as a boy
the devil to pay permitted me to dream-up
my get-away from home, far from my parents'
witchy vigilance & the wine-barrel cellars
of their household—this after my experimental
stuffing of a dinner fork into a light socket
in the green gazebo under backyard grapevines.
That fuse box blown & blackened was the bliss
of departure—it was thrilling, but sometimes
I have to stop to touch my life & see if it's real.
How surprising to find that I wanted so much,
and mostly got it. My fantasies are fewer now
(one involves living through a day without
resentments, the other getting seated next to
gorgeous Fanny Ardant on a puddle jumper).
No need to see my life as a story the world
has to read, no need for sentimental
mooning & nostalgia—blessed with a bit
of amnesia anyway, I don't recall much
of what went down. I know that it's engraved
there on some cellular level, & that I can't
command the consequences. Like a spider
who has climbed atop a survey stake in a bull-
dozed field, I feel slightly truer in any case.

This poem.today in my inbox.I was struck by the words,"i have to stop to touch my life to see if it is real.How surprising to find that I wanted so much,and mostly got it, my fantasies are fewer now....I feel slightly truer in any case".
I remember as a young child,a teenager day dreaming of what I imagined or hoped my life would be as a grown-up,some of the images were concrete,linear actual desires, much of which I have achieved or has realized, but then there is the ineffable ,that which the mind can not conjure up in concrete ways, the imageless, the intangible, the wordless, that which we feel as wave of undulating visceral ,something unique to the core fiber of our essence that secretly we know we are always striving to get there ,be there or with ,so to speak. It is like the metaphor of the unpeeling of the wet ,crisp,incisive unfurling of onion skin. That is still in process,in growth, the unfurling of our onion skins with salty,acidy tears,that at first seem to obscure the vague new forming images that appear, but isn't it true that when the tears have cleared, the onion blossom is unabashedly open, we have a greater clarity,a vision that is deeper, truer and closer to pointing us where or how to take the next step to our lives..
Thank you David Rivard for writing,sharing your thoughts.

Today ,the birthday of another of the finest poets

For What Binds Us

BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

We are often ashamed of the scars we accumulate in our bodies,our souls from the sheer experience of living our lives. What would our lives be without such scars,would we trade it for a life without love,passion,conviction.If we could see deeply past the intricate woven fibers of our scars,what would we see ....

Today ,the birthday of poet,Edna St. Vincent Millay

Journey
Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass
And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
Blow over me—I am so tired, so tired
Of passing pleasant places! All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;
Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand
Tugged ever, and I passed. All my life long
Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;
And now I fain would lie in this long grass
And close my eyes.
Yet onward!
Cat birds call
Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk
Are guttural. Whip-poor-wills wake and cry,
Drawing the twilight close about their throats.
Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines
Go up the rocks and wait; flushed apple-trees
Pause in their dance and break the ring for me;
And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread
Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant,
Look back and beckon ere they disappear.
Only my heart, only my heart responds.
Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side
All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot
And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs—
But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,
And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,
The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,
Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road
A gateless garden, and an open path:
My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

One of my favorites...WH Auden, To commemorate his birthday

Today,W.H. Auden's Birthday

Lullaby

Lucy and Janis

Lucy from Radiolab on Vimeo.


Tonight ,I listened to this amazing,but tragic story of Lucy,the chimpanzee

Lucy the chimpanzee was raised as a human in the 1970s and 80s by Dr. Maurice and Jane Temerlin. Black and white images of Lucy with the Temerlins from Dr. Temerlin's now out-of-print book, "Growing up Human,' courtesy of Science and Behavior Books, Inc. Photos of Lucy in Gambia courtesy of Janis Carter. Slideshow produced by Sharon Shattuck.

Lucy ,the chimpanzee had great difficulty separating from the Temerlins who raised her in captivity. She struggled with identifying herself with the life of a chimp after eleven years of living in a human household. She became very attached to Janis Carter, a graduate student who cleaned her cage while she lived with the Temerlins. Janis acclimatized Lucy back to chimp life on an island off Gambia.Janis ,herself had to at times eat ants to show Lucy what appropriate chimp behavior was.Janis had to isolate herself from Lucy by living in a cage herself,so she would go to live with fellow chimps. Janis walked the fine line of facilitating Lucy's survival in the wild,but also supporting her independence.Lucy,at the end because of her gregarious tendencies towards humans, probably got too close to one who experienced her as threat and ended her very complicated life.Nature and its inhabitants should be left to live freely without our constant meddling.

One of my favorite poets..on life

What it means to be free or not in "room"

I have recently read a touching book ,"Room" by Emma Donnahue,about what makes us human, about our resilience to survive if we have feelings of connection to others, the desire to give what ever we have hidden in us to another, to desire to love another and take responsibility for the good of another, which is ultimately for the good of our selves. A woman ,Ma,is kidnapped. In the course of her years of captive,slave she births a child in captivity, Jack who teaches her about the courage to live, to live,and ultimately to be free.Ma births Jack alone in captivity. The birthing of this baby orangutan in captivity reminded of the beginnings of Jack's life in captivity.


Eventually Ma and Jack leave "room" , to "outside". Here is a version of what outside could mean to someone who sees it for the
first time or every time.



i thank you God for most this amazing
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


by ee cummings

The Beauty of the Beluga

What I heard tonight...Mercy

The wonder that keeps the world alive...for Valentine's Day

for Valentine's Day

The puppet who is us...

This weekend I was lucky to see this heartfelt dance performance that portrays some of the essential strivings we have as humans beings to find connection with one another. The dance is centered around a young sensitive puppet boy of artistic inclination who at times is so bedazzled by the world and its complex beauty he fears to venture forth and touch life and be part of it. The dancers transmit their energy,emotions and gestures through the puppet and the puppet through them in turn. At times it is unclear if the movement or emotion is generated by puppet,dancer or from us ,we who observe,yet contain every human aspect that is portrayed, The piece reminded me of the words of the poet ,



I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Man...footsteps perilously pass ...in marble winter

THE “ODE TO MAN” FROM SOPHOCLES’ ANTIGONE
by Anne Carson

Many terribly quiet customers exist but none more
terribly quiet than Man:
his footsteps pass so perilously soft across the sea
in marble winter,
up the stiff blue waves and every Tuesday
down he grinds the unastonishable earth
with horse and shatter.

Shatters too the cheeks of birds and traps them in his forest headlights,
salty silvers roll into his net, he weaves it just for that,
this terribly quiet customer.
He dooms
animals and mountains technically,
by yoke he makes the bull bend, the horse to its knees.

And utterance and thought as clear as complicated air and
moods that make a city moral, these he taught himself.
The snowy cold he knows to flee
and every human exigency crackles as he plugs it in:
every outlet works but
one.
Death stays dark.

Death he cannot doom.
Fabrications notwithstanding.
Evil,
good,
laws,
gods,
honest oath taking notwithstanding.

Hilarious in his high city
you see him cantering just as he please,
the lava up to here.


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2010/08/16/100816po_poem_carson#ixzz1Cr09DSN4