Have you thanked (and apologized to) your body lately?

Many of us apologize to fellow human beings or even animals when we have "done 'em wrong," but have we ever apologized to our own body, its entirety and its individual parts?

As I laid down last night and tried to drift off to sleep, a glaring condemnation came to me: "Nothing is closer to you than your body. Take some time to feel it and thank it from its little toe up to the last hair on top of my head."

Lovingly, I felt my baby toe, how it was certainly one of the smaller least noticed part of my body, but how it was securely attached to my stronger foot, soft and smooth on top, tough and calloused on its heel. I thanked my foot, my feet for taking me on so many walks without complaining or hurting, obediently headed in the direction my mind told them to take.

I moved up to my ankle, my fragile ankle that likes strong supportive shoes to give it strength. I remembered how both my ankles rebelled against ice skates when I was a young girl, and how we came to an agreement back then that ice skating and my ankles were not made for each other. With that agreement made, my ankles served me well for another 50 years or more with no complaints other than a slight spring when I accidently stepped into a small pothole on a street one day.

I continued up to my calves, strong muscular segments with hard curves with tight skin around them making me thank them for their athletic agility. Then I moved to my knees, who also have provided wonderful steady bending with no pain service my entire life. I thanked them for being so durable and seemingly ready to provide hundreds of more miles of walks ahead.

At my thighs, more pride filled my thoughts. So little fat, but instead lean upper legs that made me think of myself as a glamorous runner some 30 years ago. I thanked them for their beauty and service.

I came to my genital area and thought of my vagina, uterus, vulva and other reproductive sexual parts. I thanked them for serving me so well and making it possible for me to birth five perfect children who made their entrances into person-hood through me. I also apologized for the many times I forced these parts of me to follow through with acts they were not interested in at the time, but nevertheless were coerced to be receptive to forces beyond their strength to withstand.

Then I thought of my other internal organs and parts. My kidneys which today don't function as well as I would like; my liver that was damaged due to years of gallbladder problems around it; my stomach, my heart, lungs that breathe in and out deeply each night lulling me finally into sleep; my intestines, my half a thyroid that works twice as hard these days since half of it was removed because of nodules half a year ago.

I continued my thankfulness by thanking my arms for carrying many bags of groceries, hearty children and gardening equipment, for steering my car and hugging loved ones. I also apologized to them for forcing them to hug those they didn't want to hug, as well.

My thumbs touched my fingers and I thanked all eight of them, along with the hands that assemble them into some of the best tools available to us humans. Without them I would have never been able to play the piano or violin, or even type on my computer. I thanked them for withstanding arthritis and other ailments that affect so many people near my age.

As my fingers softly touched my breasts, I thanked them for feeding five children, some up to three years of age, even though they were as small as a young teenager's. At times they cracked and became infected, were chapped and red, but they wanted to nourish the children who depended on them. Once more I thanked them, apologizing for the times when they too only wanted to rest, be revived and sometimes just left alone.

I thanked my back for being so strong, for bearing me and my loads, while yet to this day, seldom giving me any worry from pain. What a strong and cooperative back I have!

Then I thought of my neck, another part of me that uncomplainingly and constantly hold my head up, allow me to nod and to turn my gaze from one side to another. It may be overly wrinkled, but it works as good as new.

At last I was at the Central Intelligence Area of my body, my head. I thanked my mouth for helping me speak, eat and smile; my teeth (the ones still there, as well as those who are now gone); my nose, my ears and eyes, all of which bring such wonderful sensations to my body, as well as leading me down the road, hearing dangerous and loving sounds and enhancing my appetite.

I considered my hair, once bright curly red and now graying and thinning. I thanked the soft strands that are still hanging on, enduring shampoos and tight hats in the cold.

Finally, I said thank you to my brain, which I have worked extra hard, often at the expense of my feeling heart. I reminded it that it was okay to tune out sometimes, to let the heart take over. I appreciated all the wonderful years of service, but too much of anything is a compulsion. I simply told it to relax, to not worry any more, to be positive, hopeful; to store the good memories and let go of the bad, to forgive and to accept the heart's desire to love.

With every part thanked and stroked, I drifted off to sleep, at last at peace with my best friend and servant, my trusty body.

Truly a gift from a Creator with quite an imagination Herself.

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The emails that haunt me

The emailing has stopped.
I can now go online without fear
Of condemnations, accusations,
Words that I just can't bear.

I was a poison to my child,
Not assessing my true faults,
I was selfish, domineering,
To blame the marriage fell apart.

For days I went online
Dreading that one more email,
Avoiding my trusty computer
I hurt both day and night.

Eventually the anger
Cooled on both sides.
I held my breath, went online
.....And his wasn't there.

Still the hurt remains
With each in- and exhale.
I think of what could have been
If I just tried to be more real.

If I had gone the many more
Miles, not just the one extra.
If I had kept a clean house
Instead of one with messes.

If I had bit my tongue,
My lips and my heart,
If I had washed the dishes
And scrubbed extra hard.

If I had loved just a little more,
Loved with more than I had
To give and give a lot more.

But the past is now gone
The future not here yet.
The moment that's present
Calls me if I'll just hear.

Maybe now I can finally go to sleep
At last alone in my sweet little bed,
With only memories for company
And hopes the emails have ceased.

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Come with me to the Feeling Tree

My feelings count just like yours.
They walk along with my tears.

Many look at me and say she won't care,
But I do, and I cry when no one's there.

Tell me about the other one,
That you and I are finished.
Tell me about your good life.
You know I read, I listen.

I soak it all up and store it away,
In a place hidden where I chew
And spit, and wonder just why
I even care when I know it's through.

I have taken insults, put downs,
Ridicules and heartless jokes.
I have laughed at myself while
Crying where it hurts most.

My face will show its smile
Whenever you appear.
Can't let you see my tears,
My sorrow, the witness of fear.

The innocent rule because they
know not what hurts the other.
The wise tell themselves they're just
Words. They mean no harm.

But they do,
And I chew them up again...
The feelings I buried when
I was young and shy and afraid.

To feel, to feel real
The good and the bad.
To be sad when I'm hurt,
To show all that's in my heart.

So come with me to
The Feeling Tree so that
Its fruit may be picked.

The sour, the sweet,
The bitter and tearful.

I take the tree home
With me to nurture and care.
May the fruit of the Feeling Tree
Always be there!

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Lonely Night of Surrender

I got a card today from a forty year life
Down the drain through the trenches,
No longer life sustaining,
A disaster, no longer.

I cried and I moaned
Why had it come to this?

Why are these forty years to no avail,
Awash in the past, much too long?

We fell like a boulder from a mountaintop,
We were so sure it would last.

Children came, love went lame
And the affair became a nothing,
A past, a has been, a fluke,
But lives depended on it.

So we pretended, at least I did.
The commonalities were abnomalities.
We existed but didn't relate,
Going this way and that, never together.

So today I lament a life not lived.
My hair is gray, crevices weave through my face.
I said I must go away
Rather than live a lie without love.

Today regrets cover the walls of my life
While I know the turn I took was right.
The wait could wait no longer,
Giving up all, I left not looking behind.

Now today my enemy Guilt
Haunts my days and nights.
Should I have, how could I have,
Ought I to, why and why not....

I see that the clock continues to tick
And the seasons continue to change.
Friends go by the wayside
But I remain convinced I had to.....

So come and cry with me
On this lonely night of surrender.

Will I ever be so sure that
I did the right thing, said the right
Stuff, lived the right life
Knowing it had to be done?

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Heathcare Reform is half way to reality!

They actually did it!

We're not dreaming. The US House of Representatives voted for Healthcare Reform tonight at just after 11 PM.

Now will the Senate join them?

Much is left to be done, and by no means can the Democrats claim victory yet. We figured that the House would be more representative of most Americans' hopes than the Senate. We have many more members on our side there, and could even afford to have a few Blue Dogs eating their dog poop on the fringes.

So from here, we go to the Senate. And if we are finally successful there, we go to a conference committee.

In the meantime, say a few prayers. The very hardest is yet to come. We have our work cut out for us.

And watch Rush and all his ditto heads next Monday. They are going to be foaming at the mouth. But then occurances like this help their ratings. Secretly they're thanking us.

No go to bed. Have sweet dreams. The work continues tomorrow.

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"The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver premiers in Asheville!

Lacuna isn't laguna misspelled.

Keep your eyes open because you'll be seeing The Lacuna around a lot in the next year.

The Lacuna is novelist Barbara Kingsolver's most recent book, and it's poised to knock your socks off!

We folks in Asheville tonight filled a high school auditorium, paying $28 plus tax to pay for her book before we were admitted to the school auditorium.

Malaprop's Book Store, Asheville's social place for book lovers, put on the book reading. But gosh, I never saw a Malaprop's book reading that attracted some 500 persons, all waving The Lacuna high above their heads as they sat on the edge of their seats to hear what Kingsolver had to say about Asheville in her novel, which is also set in a Mexican coastal island jungle with a Lacuna.

Merriam Webster defines Lacuna as:

"......a blank space or a missing part : gap also deficiency, a small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical structure."

Kingsolver uses this word in her new novel as she describes a cavity on the tropical island as one "that goes down to the middle of the earth, down as far as the devil himself."

Her novel also features a search for a gap, such as a missing part of a manuscript. On the book jacket, with a hole smack in the middle of it, Kingsolver writes of the lacuna as "between truth and public presumption."

I can't tell you much more about the novel because I just got my book tonight. It won't be officially released until tomorrow, November 3rd. So we beat 'em to it by being honored as the first on Kingsolver's book tour. She demanded that Asheville be first because half of the book is set in 1940s Asheville, with its downtown hardware store, its Tunnel Road, Biltmore Mansion, Grove Park Inn and Grove Arcade.

In her research for the book Kingsolver discovered that during World War II the Japanese attacked the refineries in Los Angeles while the Nazis sank our tankers off the Carolina coast. She asked how many of us were aware of this information? I personally was doubtful because no one had ever told me that.

This was just one point she was trying to get across in her book: American's insistance that we are invincible. We are the best! After all we are Americans!

In Kingsolver's book we get another look at Diego Rivera, Lev Trotsky and Joe McCarthy's Committee on Un-American Activities.

The big question that drew Kingsolver to write this book, she claimed during a Q & A after the reading, was why we Americans have such a hard time bringing art and politics together, unlike most of the other countries she has visited around the world, which frequently honor their artists with leadership positions in their governments.

What do Americans do? We censor them. We label them as Communists, as Un-American. Even in the years following the great Communist scare of the McCarthy era, note how we Americans have continued to put down our artists when they enter the political realm. Watch out liberal Democrats like Jane Fonda or Brad Pitt or Sean Penn! (Exceptions to this, however, include Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, both California Republicans, and Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota.)

How fitting that Kingsolver would choose Asheville as the setting for half of this novel, since this small city's art community is often found to be politically active. In my opinion, Asheville is a fine example of an activist artist community which believes that art and politics can be wedded, that politics is enriched when it brings the voices of our artists into its life.

Kingsolver's protagonist Harrison Shepherd, born in the USA but reared in Mexico, "casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence."

The jacket of The Lacuna tells us:

"In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of Artist's Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lucuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities."

So go out to your locally owned independent book store tomorrow and be the first, along with me, to read the sure to be controversial new novel by the lady who gave us The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, The Bean Trees and most recently Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

One last note: Kingsolver noted that she majored in biology in college. Whereas an in-depth research paper on an important biological and ecological issue might get her 12-14 readers, she can now get readers in the millions to read her novels, in which she brings to life much of what she learned as a scientist.

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