Crazy on Richard Thompson's "persuasion"

I am in the spell of the Bavarian forest.

There is nothing like having this massive resource, just a quarter hour by walking or bicycle, from your front door.

There is so much there, from blueberries, to cranberries, to chanterelles, and just the experience of Being there..

It's like being in love with someone no one ever met or heard of. Well, that's my life in general, so no surprises.

My love is in the forest, and will remain everso.

My heart is broken, when I cannot be there.

I am in a place where the forest is at my toes, but I need a car to get there.

My life not being centered around a car, I am stuck in urban inanity..

and I have to find a solution.

Can't I just walk down the street, into the forest?

Can't I..?

My travels describe a crazy pair of zig-zags. The one between Austin and Indianapolis was pretty much without angst. I was still in the US, but no longer in Austin.

That was bad enough.

Then I was no longer in the US.. in less than a year and a half, Chuck had his long-sought-after job in Germany, unfortunately under an insane person, and we had something like two weeks to arrange for everything to go across the Atlantic. We took the cat by default, and now she's the 20-yr-old Trans-Atlantic Kitty of Mystery.

Enter a state of galactic freefall.

We were met in Frankfurt by longtime friends who will be friends forever, Andy & Joachim.

One met us and hugged us as we got out of customs and inspections, Andy, you saved my emotional life in Europe. You probably know that, as a longtime emigrant. That, after the fanny-pack incident. Will Americans never cease in their convenient inventions? ;-)

Joachim instigated my intellectual curiosity, simply by living in a building with holes in it.

My whole (tiny) hands fit in the cavities in the foundation of his apartment building.

"What are these?"

"50-cal holes from the Allies on their attack of Frankfurt"

If my hands could have cried in these stone cavities, they would have.

My hands have ever since been alert to historical information..

Then, we proceeded through the Frankische Schweiz, quite reminiscent of Central Texas in its limestone vertical relief.

The first day on post, after these adventures, I wakened to obscenities and prolonged screaming.

Some troopie had melted down, and they sent the Krankenwagen (German ambulance) after him. Prolonged screaming, accusations, and the people bending over the afflicted will never entirely leave my consciousness.

First the MPs came, to tuck him in their Jeep, where the accusations continued, muffled.

Well.. here I am.. I thought..

and I also knew, at that point, that German society was going to be better for me than Army society.

I also knew that my empathy for the plight of the American soldier, my respect and my support, was going to have to be unwavering.

I spent the next six years, dancing along those lines.

One of the great wonders of my life, is the path bodywork has taken me on.

Something happened, when I first discovered Structural Integration, something about the authenticity, the intensity, and the necessary integrity, caught my mind's eye.

A huge part of my personal experience in Germany was my monthly train trips and weeklong sojourns in Munich for the European Rolfing Association's (ERA) training program.

Very early in my European experience, I got on that train, and went by myself. Chuck was always and ever my "net" but I only ever called on him when I got stoned out of my gourd on chocolate croissants (this is true) and called him from Schwandorf on the "wrong train". The conductor was an angel and guided me to Weiden, where Chuck picked me up like a stray hay bale. Every other trip was mostly pro forma, on time, relaxing and delightful. Chuck would pick me up in Weiden or just at home in Pressath, where he would greet me with his own Tex-Mex dinners to soothe the soul of the hungry, haunted traveller. He "got" that problem, as no one else would.

I started in Agathareid, south of Munich, on a sheep ranch. I am leaning on a pelt from one of the mix-breed sheep from there, it warms my back and brings amusing memories of attempting to haggle with a German. Doesn't work.. he got his Euro, and I have the loveliest fluffy lambskin ever, for exactly what he wanted. He sounded just like my dad, raising the price as I tried to lower it. I laughed out loud and flashed the cash. He got what he wanted, and so did I.

I resisted the group living, until I fell in love with my roommates. One French home nurse, an adorable Sicilian girl who was always in my lap once she realized that I was a martial artist who had no personal boundaries either, and I loved her for her vivacious openness and just because she was so beautiful and affectionate, and a singer. I confess to lifting a shirt the singer left behind, a black stretchy number she left stinking of her sweat until I washed it about five times. Her voice in the room's shower left us all breathless.. no singer can resist the resonance of water.

The food was beyond amazing, even to my uneducated palate. Wild leeks, homegrown mutton & chicken, breads & cheese. It was a kind of "kindergarten" for me, in terms of Bavarian life & custom. One of my goals is to go back and do this "Spectrum of Rolfing" again someday, as a more mature Rolfer. I would love to do it every year. I wonder if the beer & cigarette addicted donkey is still there.

So I fell in love with Rolfing, like a man might fall in love with that singer. I met Tom Meyers, had him autograph my copy of Anatomy Trains, met France Hatt-Arnold, Dorit Schatz (who "got" me from "hello") Sasha B, and Christoph Sommer (who let me know that growing up was optional, which really sold me).. I fell in love with these crazy people, and even more so, I fell in love with the idea of really changing people. I fell in love with the idea of *really* changing.

I took the stinky shirt home, and I washed it, and I thought of her, and I thought of what I had learned. I got my first three Rolfing sessions and my feet stopped hurting. The old calluses peeled off my feet, and were replaced by reconfigured ones. My knees stopped hurting.

I was sold.

So the resistant, hard-headed provincial was sold on so many levels, simply by falling in love.

My father and I connect over family, history & politics, for the most part.

He was talking to me (in one of our semi-weekly phone conversations) about all the crazy things he did with me as a kid.

He says he was drunk most of the time, but I don't recall any change in his behavior until he really "got into it" and then he was pretty sedentary and sometimes obnoxious.

Mostly, when we were doing things, I wasn't aware of him being in an altered state.

One of the things I remember, is taking the flat-bottom john-boat out on the Colorado river in flood stage. I don't know why this was a good idea.

We shot out of the boat dock into the streaming chop, torn downriver until we could struggle to the other side. Then, with clumsy geometry, and me at 9-10 years old climbing the riverside trees to pull the boat along, we pulled ourselves upstream, to shoot back across, paddling like hell to hit that boat ramp on the way back across the vicious swollen river. I think I had poison ivy welts for weeks.

Keep in mind that rainfall in Texas happens a couple times a year, in 5-10 inch increments. Formerly dry creekbeds kill people every year, much less racing rivers.

I think we went out for Pit BBQ in celebration of having not drowned.

Somehow, I was already inured to this kind of thing. Some of my earliest memories are of being strapped to my dad's back, with a fly from a flyrod whizzing around my head. I remember trying to see the colors.

He told me about another adventure in which he put me on his back, and hiked up a waterfall.

When he looked down, he told me, he almost fainted. I don't remember. I remember getting better at rock-scrambling.

At age 9, he put a pistol in my hand, and taught me to shoot. He was very proud that I 1. didn't kill anyone and 2. hit my targets (I remember refusing to shoot turtles).

I think my lack of fear had some roots in his late 60s model VW Beetle which had no floor in places, all rotted out. I remember the road passing by, under my feet. I knew I could fall out, but I knew I wouldn't.

He also told me the story of teaching me and my friend Terri how to use a recurve bow in our back yard. He said we spent all day out there. I think we wanted to be Jedis. We were 13-14, the age all girls should be learning to use weapons!

Central Texas is also Snake Central, and he told me about a little snake that came up on the bank where we were fishing, and that he picked me up and held me over his head until it slithered past. I remember being outside the boat in another incident with a snake being very interested in the bait I was reeling in, and his lifting my fairly sturdy (nearly 100#) 10-year-old self out of the water and putting me in the boat.

My dad was this great, bald & burly creature with long arms and hands like slabs of butcher-block, smelling of gasoline, mown grass and WD-40.

As I grew, I got to nearly his height, with his length of waist, arm, and hardness of bone & muscle. My hands are still small, and my features more dainty, but I am still the kid who climbed the trees to pull the boat upstream, picked up the pistol with confidence & curiosity, and hopped in and out of boats without thinking about it.

I told him today, he had raised a fearless kid, and the subtext went unsaid.

He raised a fearless woman. Without meaning to, just being a dad, and doing what he did.

Whatever else wasn't perfect, he did that for me.

Since then, I've found myself dealing with fear, and fearful situations, in a way I realize most people are unable to step into.

I think my dad is starting to figure out what he did right.

It certainly wasn't anyone's model of how to raise a "young lady" and to this day, I can't set the table or fold a napkin.

I can, however, plant & raise, or find, something for that table, cook it well & competently, and do it all as ethically & humanely as possible.

Other Dad-taught talents include talking to owls & coyotes, knowing the wingbeats of a duck or dove, and being able to catch fish anywhere there is water.

It simply doesn't occur to me to be fearful, most of the time.

Even when I maybe should be.

So we finally have a partially black president (others may have been, just not obviously- I still think Taft was black- kind of a white Fat Albert).

We got a black man who can finally complain (due to being a Harvard professor) of racial profiling, and be taken seriously. We got a white cop who teaches racial sensitivity, and fell into the biggest political trap of a generation.

We got a Hispanic woman (Puerto Ricans are incredibly culturally diverse) having to be polite to a lot of idiot racist white men who are accusing HER of being racist.

That was an act of brilliant equanimity on her part, walking over that nuclear (there's only one U, in our post Bush society, thank Webster!) bed of hot coals.

I would have wacked out and put a couple gavels and some copies of the Constitution wrapped around various implements of destruction, in some very interesting places.

Sotomayor exemplified the Klingon ethic, that revenge is a dish best served very, very cold.

Don't get me wrong, I feel for all of them. My own father didn't know he was white, until he was 10 or so.

Class war has walked out into the open, in the health care debate.

What the many need, is single payer.

What the powerful few want, and they pay to get what they want, and our representatives are too weak and whorish to look at statistics instead of the almighty $D, what the powerful few want, they get.

My friend the medical examiner had something very interesting to say about socialized health care:

"I really don't want to have to do another autopsy on a middle-aged guy who died because he couldn't afford his heart/blood pressure/diabetes/cholesterol medication, and chose to feed his family instead".

I really have to steady myself, every time I think of that.

Let me give you a picture of socialism, something I have seen personally. I lived in Germany for six years, under the shelter of my husband's work with the US Army.

Every day, you see old people.

They are on bicycles, walking, chatting, gardening.

White-haired folks are everywhere. They are vital, they are participating, they are active.

They are respected, and kids behave themselves, where old folks are.

Because they know their elders have been through some Serious Shit, and don't tolerate any kind of tomfoolery.

The pyramid of failure in our culture makes a vortex of social failure, from structure to behavior.

We don't support education, or we support it spottily. We don't VALUE education, as a society.

We value Luck.

Unfortunately, Luck is not a reliable investment.

We construct our society on a rickety structure of luck & hope.

Now, we have the opportunity to back it up with the most valuable commodity of all.

Hard Work.

The people who've been working hard all the time, are ready to back this sucker up.. if only..

The people who've been on top, and their elected/hired minions, are terrified they might have to either actually get their hands dirty, or "get a haircut". Meanwhile, they are the ones with the resources to brainwash some squeaky wheels to get the attention of people unskilled in critical thinking. A nice side effect of undermining socialized education.

At this point, we are so far in the hole in terms of social "leverage" that the bottom third of society is uneducated, malnourished, and can't even walk around the mall. They are all so overfed by the stock dividend providers, that they can't, in so many ways, put one foot in front of the other.

Not in terms of health, finances, or education. They've been taught a constantly changing stream of nonsense, controlled by whatever party has power or money in their district.

So at this point, the shovel has to go in deep, to dig a new intellectual, physical and, yes, spiritual foundation. (I am a non-theist, I do better without any imaginary friends)

People have to be able to get educated, to get a job.

They get a better job, to get more educated, to get a still better job.

Along the way, they need to be able to stay healthy, free of partisan interference in their political, personal, social and professional life. I saw far better success of this in Europe, than I see in the US. People interpret freedom here, as the freedom to annoy and endanger others.

Sorry, it's not a frontier any more. Move to Antarctica (look out for penguins).

The more paths are open for people to improve themselves, the more they will do so. The immigrant populations of Europe prove this. Many of the newest, best and brightest in medicine, technology and communications, are children of immigrants.

We are a world of migrants now. We might as well give up the idea of US & Them.

We ARE them. They are us.

Now, can we get on with the evolution?

I'm so ready, I'm so not interested in the Status Quo.

We've had enough rectocranial inversion for the next ten generations.

Late summer in Maryland has been wet, with rain, wet, and more wet.

The garden, raised bed and all, has been the recipient of all the overflow. That and the low spot between us and the neighbor! It looked like a lake, this afternoon.

Rain! we get a lot of it.

I'm in a part of the world I only ever read about.

Growing up in central Texas, this part of July was the last time you ever thought about opening the windows. In the last days here, it has barely gotten hot enough to bother with anything more than the house fan and "window management". We open the house at night to let in cool air, and close up during the day to shut out the heat.

The sun has turned the corner of the solstice about a month ago now, and while most things are still in full growth, the sun has gotten old.. I can see the traces of the season beginning to age, as I see the traces in my own face & body. Things become subtly less bright, less defined. Leaves fall yellow here and there, early casualties of the beginning of season's turn.

Plants in the garden are still trying to catch up to the cool spring, while the pokeweed & hickory, and wild grapes, seem right on summer's schedule.

Last week I played hooky one day in the Appalachians, and found black chanterelles. They popped suddenly like black shredded paper in last fall's fallen leaves.

The veloute' I made still sits waiting, for another delicate dish. The earthy sweetness, the fruity musk of the incredible chanterelle infuses it.

I think I have missed raspberries for the season, but perhaps elderberries will give me a chance at wine.

No man is an island

(nor is anyone else).

It is the basic misunderstanding of the basic American, that this is a free country, and you can do what you want.

If what I want is to have elephants in my living room on the 5th floor and experiment with explosives, am I still free, if it bugs you?

If what I want is to drive as fast as I want, while talking on my cell phone, with a Rottweiler on my lap and assuming you know where I am going so I don't need to use my turn signals.. am I still free, if that bugs you, or kills your kid while I am not paying attention?

If what I want, is to drive something with a loud reverb exhaust, in a residential neighborhood or down a commercial street where people are trying to communicate in public (heaven forfend they do anything but think of me and my tiny wedding tackle) , why shouldn't you put up with it?

If what I want, is to have an untrained, insecure animal outside, who makes noise constantly, why shouldn't you put up with that?

The basic misconception is this: That we are islands.

The basic truth is this: Islands are contained by a shared ocean. The flotsam you let go, shows up on my shores. The flotsam I let go, shows up on yours.

My success in society shows up, when you don't notice me.

Your success in society is denied, if I notice you. Your loud transportation demonstrates your lack of taste, as a person's willingness to share their music or mode of transportation, is always inverse to their taste in it.

Your loud animals demonstrate your lack of self-control.

The need to hold a cell phone to your ear during every moment of your existence demonstrates your lack of self-esteem.

Your need to be in front of everyone demonstrates a drastic failure of the most basic kindergarten rule- don't be a dick.

I really despair of any Americans ever achieving something resembling civilization.

If you have never lived anywhere else, you are not qualified to comment.

The idea that we live in a pioneer society has been reduced to the most basic ideas of farting in public (which is what the loud reverb, animals & music really are) and being hogs in every social sense.

Whatever happened to being good neighbors, to thinking about the welfare of others? Whatever happened to looking out for each other? Sure, it happens in micro, but what about micro.. Real pioneer society is all about looking out for each other, because you never know when your house is going to need some help.

The Right has taken advantage of their architecting lack of education about socialism, to make it a dirty word. In fact, it's working so well for most of our modern counterparts, that they are kicking our behinds on everything from manufacturing to health care.

It's a bright, strong cup of coffee. Take a long drink.