Linda Durham's Wonder Salon

SLOUCHING TOWARDS PEACEFUL RECONCILIATION WITH THE GOLDEN LAND

2011-11-27T14:53:00.000-07:00

To share or not to share my thoughts on Myanmar/Burma! That is a question I have been pondering these past few days---ever since learning of the upcoming visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to a country that has long (and strongly) captured my heart. I am considering this impending visit with concern---if not foreboding.

My points of view, with regard to “The Golden Land”, have often been at odds with the prevailing “inside the beltway” views held and expressed by the United States Government and by the people who get their information from those sources. Clearly, my ten extended visits in the past decade, have given me a different perspective from the information disseminated by the mainstream media. The unyielding hatred of the regime, spewed by angry ex-patriots as well as by good and sincere supporters of the abused political prisoners and ethnic minorities, doesn’t tell the whole story. And the partial story has, in my opinion, damaged and delayed opportunities to understand, assist and repair the lives of the Myanmar people. Yes, the abuses and atrocities are reprehensible. However, they do not show the whole picture. Moreover, the anger, propaganda and sanctions that result, neither improve the situation nor protect and support the innocent—and most of the people living under the repressive government are innocent. The continued anger and vilification of the ever-changing regime offer no pathways to understanding. And understanding (listening, acknowledging, apologizing, forgiving) is essential if peace, opportunity, and cooperation are our true and honorable goals with regard to this largely unknown and misunderstood land.

…I site the parable of the blind men and the elephant: By simply and blindly probing the tail or the foot of the proverbial elephant one cannot get a proper understanding of the animal. The ears, the torso, the trunk…all need to be explored. It is important to give a possibility to the fact that there is much good in those whose ideas are at odds with our own. There is much to learn. I don’t want the good that exists to be overlooked or buried by those--with power--who lacked the ability to consider the whole elephant!

My travels through Mandalay, Pyin U Lwin, Bagan, Pathein, Kyaiktiyo, Kengtung, Taunggyi, Mawlamyaing…by train, car, horse cart, ferry, bicycle and foot strongly informed my view of the people, their beliefs, their ordeals. In many ways, these considered conclusions are at odds with the information that has formed the U.S policy towards this beleaguered and oppressed country: The U.S. and British Governments say “Burma”/I say Myanmar.

“Burma” a far sexier name than Myanmar and far easier to remember and pronounce is what the British renamed the country when they invaded it, exiled the Royal Family and colonized the land in the late 19th Century. They named it after the Burmans, a major ethnic group in a land of many ethnic minorities. But the official name—and an ancient name, at that---is Myanmar or Myanma. It is a common misconception in the west that the Military Regime, in a power-usurping fit of xenophobia changed the name--out of spite or meanness. In truth, they just removed the British name and restored the historic name. Ma Thanegi, a former personal secretary to Aung San Suu Kyi, researched the name “Myanmar”. She writes that on a “stone inscription known as the Yadana Kon Htan Inscription, written in early Bama (Burmese language)…are the words ‘Myanma Pyay’ which means Myanmar Country. The date of this inscription is 597 in the Myanmar Era---this translates to 1235 in the Roman calendar. Ma Thanegi concludes by saying “Even during the British era and beyond when the English speaking world used the name Burma as given by the British, to the citizens of the country, the official name in the local language has always been Myanmar.

On the first day of my first visit to the country I used to call Burma, I went to the shabby U.S. Embassy/Consular Office in downtown Yangon (most westerners still think of it as Rangoon) to let my government know that I was in “Burma” and to get some advice about traveling upcountry. They were decidedly unhelpful and offered no answers to my questions. They gave me a faded sheet (it looked like mimeograph paper) with some travel agency names and addresses. Most no longer existed. As it turned out, I didn’t need the assistance of the United States. I quickly met taxi drivers, shopkeepers, artists, monks, poets and friendly children …all of whom smiled, pointed me in interesting directions, taught me essential words and phrases, educated me about the food, currencies, family dynamics and in so many small ways exemplified their loving kindness way of living.

Ten years later, many of these people are cherished friends. Almost every day, I think about the ninety year old woman who was a Fulbright Scholar at Temple University in the late 1940’s. Her impeccable English, her deep Buddhist practice, her generosity, her wisdom and grace humble and inspire me.

The political situation in Myanmar/Burma has begun to change. Government officials are engaging in talks with members of the NLD (National League for Democracy). Aung San Suu Kyi is planning to run for election. Now, after decades of living under severe government oppression, in relative isolation and after enduring the damaging sanctions imposed the United States, Myanmar is receiving a formal visit from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This visit will bring worldwide media attention to a country that has been ignored or vilified for too long.

I wonder what will happen to the gentle people of this fragile country. How will world perception of “Burma”/Myanmar change? Will things be better or worse for the people in the Chin State? The Mon State? The Shan, Karen, Kachin States? In the past, only the bad aspects of the ever-changing, xenophobic, greedy and frequently ignorant regime got press. The good---and there has been good was almost totally ignored. One example: recently, the government of Myanmar, working with the Wildlife Conservation Society, designated an area the size of Vermont, in the northern Huwang Valley, for the largest tiger reserve in the world.

An experienced traveler friend of mine just wrote from Mandalay to tell me how much things are changing/have changed in the country since his visit the previous year. Crowds of curious tourists are suddenly flocking to the shrines and beaches and ancient sites. Hotels are full. Souvenirs are selling. In his words: “…It’s going to bust open like a ripe pomegranate! And it will not be the way we wish it was. Globalization has a way of eradicating exoticism! Already in Yangon everybody’s walking around talking on cell phones. The locals are in a big hurry to modernize…so be it! Who am I to stop them?”

Sometimes my CASSANDRA persona makes a futile rush to the fore---only to retreat, weeping!

Foreign business concerns are selling genetically modified seeds and insecticides to farmers, who for ages have grown healthy and plentiful crops in the fertile soil of the country, without “benefit” of chemicals.

The Chinese are exporting precious resources and importing junk. They almost succeeded in building a dam and a hydro-electric plant north of Myitkyina in the pristinely beautiful state of Kachin---a dam that would have destroyed villages and farmland while providing electricity (mainly) for China. The Myanmar government listened to the people and (just in the nick of time) stopped the project from going forward. I want to say that again: The government listened to the people!

My friends chide me for being an unapologetic apologist for Myanmar. Perhaps. I prefer to call myself a freelance cultural explorer who embraces that which is beautiful and memorable in the country. If I were a praying woman, I would pray that these indications of change will position the country in a solid place on the world stage---without sanctions and fighting and landmines and pollution and…

Secretary Clinton, please be gentle.

CONSEQUENCES (AND TRUTH)

2011-10-11T16:20:00.005-07:00

This morning I read a report filed by my friend Johnny Barber who has just returned from a friendship and fact-seeking trip to Afghanistan. http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/07/afghanistan-10-years-gone/ His heartfelt findings filled me with sadness and frustration. Sadness because my heart weeps over the cruelty and ignorance that foisted such hardships and pain on so many and...Frustration because I do not know where to turn nor how to work or pray or shout away the forces that would let these crimes against Nature persist. It's surely not okay to be content with signing a petition, writing a letter to an editor or standing on a busy street corner with a sign. I don't even know what my sign would say. Stop The Wars? End Corporate Greed? Teach The Children Well? Peace Over Profit? Fill the Donut Holes With $$ From the Corporate Loopholes? (that's probably too long to be read by a passing motorist) Save the Rivers...the Forests...the Water...the Mountains...the Snail Darter? (whatever happened to the snail darter?).

I think Nature Is Weeping?
Or is it Nature's fault? Does Nature not only "abhor a vacuum", but resent peaceful co-existence as well?
                   "In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments---there are consequences."
                                                                          Robert Green Ingersoll 1896
Consequences:

In 1783, President Washington spoke about consequences in an address to his Army Officers. I want to share it with you and with myself, thinking perhaps by typing it right now, right here, I might get a fuller understanding of what George meant:

               "If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter
                which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can
                invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom
               of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like
               sheep to the slaughter."

Sheep to the slaughter. I think about that when I am slogging through a security line at an airport. In fact, not long ago, I said to the barefoot man in front of me in the queue, as he was struggling to ease his laptop out of a makeshift case, while holding his belt in his mouth (I think it was a snakeskin belt)..."I don't know if I should "mo-o-o" or "ba-a-a-a". He didn't get it. Or if he got it, he didn't let on---perhaps out of fear of...of what? The consequences? I endured the unpleasant humiliation of being fondled by a short, chubby, uniformed Patriot-actress because I refused to go through the naked picture booth at the Albuquerque Sunport. Two men watched from behind the safety of a Plexiglas barrier while she explained just how she was going to be touching me. She wore plastic gloves while she inspected my hair and breasts and inner and outer thighs while I cried---real Grandmother umbrage tears! Consequences...

But that is a small --borderline insignificant--example of consequences or "sheeple-ness". There are bigger ones, of course. What if one is late with a payment? Utilities, Cable, Mortgage, Credit Card...These companies offer the "infractor" an opportunity to experience shame. Someone from the Phillipines will call. They will recite their name but it won't be understood because the cheap phone connection is just that: cheap. They will speak from a script. They will ask for information that they already have. They will offer unacceptable terms or suggestions. Or they will attempt to extract a promise that the delinquent debtor will or will not re-finance an old car to make a payment or hit up old Aunt Blanche.  Finally there will be an offer to consider a reduction in interest in exchange for answering endless questions about bills and savings and income and blood type! Shame is an unpleasant consequence.

However, I am mainly concerned with national and global consequences.   I am mentioning the consequences that have arisen because of the greed and sociopathic behavior of a few powerful corporate types. Clever, sneaky individuals who are far more interested in accumulating obscene amounts power, political access and manipulative skills that actually go a long way toward the destruction of our planet, our relationships with the people of other countries, our civil society. These are some of the dangerous and dreadful consequences of greed-mongering.

How did it get like this? How did we fall into a somnambulistic state as a country so that we no longer Pay Attention, no longer think for ourselves, no longer see through the propaganda and hype that fills the airwaves. Did you watch Dancing With The Stars this week?   Did you follow the story of the missing white baby girl? Did you spend money at WalMart? Did you ask your Doctor if you need any one of a score of designer pharmaceuticals that get more media time and attention that people who are working to end child hunger...or homelessness or environmental degradation? I did some of that...I tuned in to see Chas Bono attempt the Pasa Doble. And I began to question whether the parents of the tiny white baby girl might have something to do with the mysterious disappearance of the child. At least I did NOT go to WalMart. I have never been in a WalMart---but that's because I am willing (and sort of able) to spend a little more money for things by buying from locally owned businesses who support my community. Not everyone is able to do that.   WalMart can easily under-buy and over-advertise thereby successfully seducing people into their lairs.  And, in the process, they can crush...obliterate...many neighbor-friendly small businesses through aggressive and strategic corporate competition. Consequently, I resent them and the other soulless mega-corporations that have built and climbed the ladder greed toppling countless small businesses (and small business people). I resent the power they have achieved over our lives--power that has become nearly impossible to reverse.
Consequences  These lamentable and practically irreversible consequences are the result (I'm getting all wound up here) of the horrendous and savagely greedy actions and policies of a (relatively) few people; a few people who sit in plush offices...or on lavish yachts dictating these regulations to lobbyists who then present them to our Congressional representatives (along with perks or threats) who then vote yea or nay, in accordance with the dictates of those flying around on their private jets...These "corporacrats" are practically worry free. Their kids are in excellent private schools. Their houses are warm in the winter and cold in the summer. They pay off their sexy black credit cards easily--every month. They have rich private doctors and extravagant insurance policies. And they rarely encounter a struggling single mother who has been threatened with foreclosure. They don't run into many eighty year olds living on social security alone...Alone.
Somehow, we have let this happen---through misunderstanding, laziness, pre-occupation, disinterest. And now, we can see the consequences.

Minutes ago, I heard on the news that the United States Attorney General (and associated minions) had foiled a plot by an Iranian (?) terrorist (?) to assassinate the Saudi-Arabian Ambassador to the U.S. Everyone is already speculating that this could be an act of war on the part of Iran. At least that's what the Israelis think. I'm suspicious. And that is a consequence of the many times that things "the American People" were encouraged to embrace or to believe turned out not to be believed! Instead, we were "fed" carefully scripted propaganda to seduce "us" into accepting lies for truth. I'm not buying the lies---even though there might be a grain of truth in them.
That too is a consequence!

Something that Oliver Wendell Holmes (Abrams v. United States) wrote strikes me as a fitting close to all this:
                             When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths,
                             they may come to believe even more than they believe the very
                             foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desires
                             is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best test of truth
                             is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition
                            of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes
                            safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our
                            Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.

Let's "experiment" with a new way of thinking. Let's take care of one another. Let's occupy our minds with thoughts of justice and peace.
Peace!

LIFE ITSELF!

2011-10-04T14:31:00.002-07:00

                     Fortunately (psycho)analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts.
                     Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.
                                                                    Karen Horney Our Inner Conflicts

All day I have been sitting in front of this computer--not writing, just sitting.   I've been carefully turning and examining the big globe of the world that lives within arms reach of my desk. I want to refresh my memory about the neighboring countries of Croatia (there's Hungary, Slovenia...uh...Bosnia-Herzegovenia and another former Yugoslavian country--but, I can't recall it at the moment and now the globe is turned to the South Pacific.
I don't know what to write but I don't want to stop typing--now that I'm actually typing. If I stop now I know I'll get all wrapped up in something that keeps me from my intended task: noting down various motes of thoughts, in their brief moments of existence, before they float out of reach as thought motes so easily do. So easily.    Just now, I turned the globe around: Montenegro! That's the country I couldn't recall.
Now, moments later, I'm checking out Iran. I am planning to travel there in November. I notice how big Iran is compared to Iraq, for instance. I touch certain raised surfaces of the globe indicating the mountainous areas in Iran and also in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan...My long-time fascination with globes and atlases and maps may or may not pre-date my life-long fascination with the great cities of the world and with exotic islands and mountain deathzones and desert oases and remote cultures of our remarkable planet. I'll chalk it up to a simple--or not so simple--chicken/egg conundrum.
Having tired (for the moment) of my global investigation of countries and their neighbors, I decide to read and answer some e-mails and facebook messages. I aam restless, but fighting it. I resolve (I'm frequently "resolving") to write a new piece for this blog, which is precisely what I'm doing now (not your "now", my "now").
Hmmm...When I'm not near my computer, I notice that I have lots of ideas for topics I want to tackle in my writing. But, today, with plenty of time and access to this keyboard, I cannot quite locate a teeth-worthy topic. So, I continue to read random passages from a book about a woman traveling alone in 1930's Persia...and I peruse the book section of The Sunday New York Times...

Then...PAUSE...maybe some tea would be tasty right about now.

In the kitchen, while making a pot of tea and finishing the Sudoku puzzle, I turn on the news: Occupy Wall Street; cruel destruction of a mosque in the troubled West Bank; pundits discuss the "N" word; joblessness; Greece may default...Aaahrrgh! I have passionate feelings about all of these topics but I am somehow (temporarily, I hope) unable or otherwise disinclined to slow down or to speed up enough to write about them with any depth or clarity. The potential depth and clarity, that I feel certain exist for me, remain lodged somewhere between my bleeding heart of the matter and the never-ending matter of my wandering mind. This mind of mine loves to slide swiftly from one thrilling idea to another possible or impossible solution and then onto a new radical conclusion or an ongoing intriguing or thorny puzzle...hoping to land on an answer to an issue of monumental importance.

Forsooth! Methinks this Ego, with whom I am intimately associated, doth not dally long enough in any realm in order to uncover the elusive truths for which it lazily yearns. It is a dancer; a hip-hopper with a limp. "...a player who struts..."

I cover my open eyes with the palms of my hands. I look hard into the mano-manufactured darkness. Is it possible, I wonder, with full purpose and intention, to see through these hands and through my self-created barrier? What does this habit of self-imposed darkness tell me about myself? I want to see something. I want to see something more; something on the other side of the darkness---where the light originates.

Once again, I am searching through magazines, atlases, dictionaries, news reports, rooms, closets, memories, fantasies...looking for something to caress, to finesse---something that will hold my attention, something to take me away from the news and the books that need to be arranged and the table that needs dusting and the plants that need watering and the bills that need to be paid and the hunger that taunts me...I want to go somewhere or to be somewhere or to be someone who is somewhere, somewhere else... somewhere from which to return to tell others of the somewheres where I have been. "somewhere I have never traveled, gladly..." (e.e. cummings)

What is this restlessness?

My tea gets cold, steeping too long in the little white pot, while I retreat to my office to look up a quote that I think is by Alexander Pope---but I'm not sure. Yes, it is by Alexander Pope: "A little learning is a dangerous thing."
But so is a lot of learning, Alexander! And so is no learning, I hasten to add.

PAUSE

It's actually the next day---the day after I wrote what is written above. So much has happened since the pause...I have no idea how much. No one does. It's unknowable. Somehow I stretch (futilely, of course) to feel the weight and wonder of everything that has happened since I paused...I can't even fathom how much has happened to me, in my world and now (!!) I am imagining everything that has happened to the billions of people in the world in these few hours and, by extension, to all the animals and plants and inanimate objects that exist: the accidents and the births and deaths and the tears (of joy and anguish) and the secrets and the clouds and the movement of the sands in all the deserts and...and I am so fucking awed by the everything-ness of everything.

And the above is what I sense I sense in those times when I cover my open, searching, wondering, wandering eyes. With the palms of my trusty, well-used hands with all their lifelines, relationship lines, wrinkles, freckles and veins, I attempt to touch the fathomless and unfathomable universes in this particular Time and Location in which I have placed myself---in a (I know, I know) hopelessly naive effort to figure things out...to figure out this Self of mine...

To me, I am a fascinating and super-complex, Gordian knot-like tangle of the memories, fantasies, plans and confessions of a wondering, wandering totally incomplete creation (or creature) made (simply) from Time and dirt and air and static and some magnificent secret ingredient...

                                      "We dance round in a ring and suppose
                                       But the secret sits in the middle and knows."
                                                                                      Robert Frost

THOUGHTS ON KILLING AND FORGIVENESS

2011-09-26T19:11:00.001-07:00

                      "...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;
                       and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
                                                    John Donne Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

It was through ignorance and impatience that I killed the unhatched/unborn robin. And it was through sheer neglect that I killed the tiny turtle with the pink flower painted on its tiny shell. Sixty years later, I still feel some guilt, some sadness when I recall those killings. I get a queasy feeling and I gently clench my teeth and I squeeze my eyes shut in apologetic acknowledgement of those long ago crimes against Life. Small crimes. Still, I think those small killings have left a tiny black speck on my soul--all innocence notwithstanding.
Over the years, I've killed ants and mosquitos and other insects as well as the occasional spider...but not so much any more. Now, I shoo their peskiness away...or I leave them alone...or I gently remove them to an unobtrusive place. I do this not because I am slouching towards Buddhism so much as because I find that I am moving, naturally, to a place of compassion for all living things. Although, I still sense a snippet of ego in my actions/non-actions toward all life.
                                                And so I wonder: Why am I not a vegetarian!

In the long ago seasons of love (circa 1960 something) I killed a rattlesnake...days after I had been taught how to load and fire a little 22 calibre Smith and Wesson.   You see, my gun-savvy husband was insistent that I should be pistol competant---living, as we did, off the grid, in the wilds of the New Mexican desert. I didn't shoot the rattlesnake because he/she was threatening to bite me. No. It's not like the rattlesnake was invading my home or about to eat the quail that lived nearby.  Nor was the rattlesnake in the corral where it might have spooked one of the horses---thrusting its poison-filled fangs into the leg of my Palomino. No, the snake was by the side of a country road, far from any so-called civilization. My husband spotted it as we were driving from one rural place to another. He stopped the truck. He handed me the twenty-two colt revolver. He encouraged me (coaxed me) to get out of the car and to shoot the rattlesnake...

It was coiled up in rattlesnake fashion, next to a yellow chamisa. I stood at a safe distance. The snake looked at me. I pointed the gun. I pulled the trigger. BANG! The little bullet went through the snake's body several times.

I never shot the gun again. I can still recall the place in the road where I killed it. I can conjure the blue sky, the autumn foliage, the distant mountains..and I can still see the mangled piece of flesh that once was a creature---minding its own business, doing no harm, thinking about crossing the road...thinking about getting to the other side, perhaps.

I have a t-shirt that says DO NO HARM. I got it in Greece during my weeks with the passengers of The Audacity of Hope/International Peace Flotilla; a gathering of people who would not kill, joining together-from the far corners of our world to stop the killing and harming of others---to stop violence through peaceful means...wearing shirts that plainly said DO NO HARM.

Do peaceful means succeed in stopping killing?

TROY DAVIS was killed last week. MURDERED

     "You never had time to learn.
     They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base
     they killed you."
                                                   Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms

Troy was executed, murdered. Despite the pleas and various peaceful protests and despite the petitions to stop the killing, the execution was executed. It was carried out in order to satisfy the decades-long cry from a few angry friends and some family members of the slain victim---an off-duty policeman. The angry and unforgiving people were tireless (and ultimately successful) in their pursuit of retribution. Retribution? There is no righteous retribution to be found in the murder-for-murder form of punishment. And in a justice system that is sometimes unjust, who can justify strapping a young man to a gurney and---in a semi-private "screening room"---injecting him with lethal poisons!
People watched this spectacle. Yes, they did!
While hundreds of caring anti-death-penalty friends and strangers stood outside the death penalty prison with signs and prayers and petitions (petitions with thousand upon thousands of names of people asking the government of the state of Georgia to stop the execution, to have a new trial, to consider the "recantations" of the original witnesses and the clear evidence of reasonable doubt and the pleas from The Pope and Bishop TuTu and President Jimmy Carter) a few people sat in stone silence and stillness and watched a man be murdered thinking it would (at last, at last) assuage their pain or end the annoying, ongoing questions: to kill him or not to kill him? Guilty or not guilty? Right or wrong? Forgive or withhold forgiveness?

     "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
     But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle
     and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that
     it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
                                                        Ernest Hemingway   "A Farewell to Arms"

Forgiveness. Now, we who cried when Troy died, we who signed petitions to spare his life, we who stood outside the execution prison must forgive those who---decades ago---rushed to judge him, tried him, found him guilty, sentenced him...It is up to us to find, in our hearts, forgiveness for those who wanted him executed, who held on to their anger, who denied him a new trial, a polygraph test,,,We must forgive the parole board, the governor's office, the Governor...the Supreme Court...We must "forgive them" for---in the words of a great man of love and peace (Jesus Christ)---"... for they know not what they do."

Or words to that effect.

I want to know that I am forgiven and that I have forgiven my childhood self for forgetting to keep water in the tiny turtle's habitat that I kept in the abandoned chicken coop in the back of my neighbor's yard and for my misguided notion that I could speed up the hatching of the little blue egg by wrapping it in a paper towel and placing it in a little metal bowl and warming the bowl with some matches my friend Margie stole from her brother's room...and for the unnecessary murder of the rattlesnake...and for the accidental killing of the jackrabbit in the road one night very late, driving home from an evening of idle conversation...

And while I'm at it: I wonder if I might forgive myself for all my lazy or cavalier or thoughtless killings of... ideas, and friendships, and Time, and opportunities...And finally, let me strive to understand and to remember that, not unlike Hemingway,

                "I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after
                 and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
                                                                              Death in the Afternoon

RESTORE RESTORETH RESTORATION

2011-09-16T08:13:00.043-07:00

"...shepherd...I shall...want...to lie down in green pastures...still waters...
restoreth my soul...righteousness...fear no evil...art with me...
a table before me...my cup runneth over...goodness and mercy...
all the days of my life...forever.
                                                                excerpts from Psalm Twenty-three

(Caution if you are squeamish!)
My left big toenail and the second toenail of my right foot are growing back--after falling off. First the toes were injured. Then they were infected, sore and fragile. Black. Soon the nails were dead. Now they are growing back. It's amazing, isn't it, the way the body restoreth itself. I've been wearing a band-aid on the big toe since early July...so I've had a summer of unfortunate pedicurial realities to endure. Not an earth-shaking inconvenience...I wouldn't even mention it except...
Last evening, in the middle of a luxurious mountain pine-scented bubble bath, I looked at that offending/offensive toenail...and noticed that it is actually restoring itself, reproducing those peculiar cells. And, I began to wax semi-poetic and philosophic about the way in which virtually everything works; about how things begin and how they are affected by other things or events and how they respond to those events or things and what the various effects and outcomes are and how...just how, things are restored.

I believe that I, we, you, he, she, it, they shall be restored.

There is a desire for order in the universe...I think. And it all seems so alternately mysterious and predictable. I am thinking about those tests in which one is asked to predict the next number in a series of numbers. But how can one answer accurately without considering how at that next number perhaps the whole pattern would change and the series would have to be reconsidered and reconfigured from the point of the next unexpected number.
I wait, and I search while waiting, for the next expected or unexpected number or incident or accident or event. And I wonder if there is something that should be--or might be--observing me and wondering or predicting just what to expect with my next move or accident...Probably not. And yet...I muse on...
YES!
"Re" is such a wonderful suffix. So forgiving. Restore. Revive. Rework. Rearrange. Re-evaluate. Re-energize. Remember. Revisit. Relive. Relieve. Resuscitate. Resurrect. Resume...
Restore order...in the court of public opinion. Restore our faith in humanity. Restore a sense of optimism in the land---across the land. Restore confidence in the future...That's what I am struggling to do. Confidence in my future and yours and ours...Restore a sense of community, a sense of purpose, a sense of goodness...
Restore our collective pride in our family, home, neighborhood, town, city, country, world...a sense of cooperation. Restore our trust in our neighbors, our laws, our leaders.
We are weary from the erosion of so many valuable things in our lives--in the environment, of course...but even more so in our values...
My father lived by the saying "My word is my bond." It was his truth. We could rely on his word. He valued it. We valued it. Today? "Sorry Sir, we don't take words for bonds. We're going to need to see some collateral." Collateral. My collateral has been damaged...I only have my word. Of course they're going to need to see some collateral. Because Trust is gone. It has no value in today's world.

But...couldn't it be re-built? Couldn't we realize that it was injured. That it was sore and that it got infected? And that it is fragile...Isn't it possible to realize that there is in Nature (including Human Nature) a force to restore.   Let the land lie fallow so that it will be restored so that it can hold and nurture and nourish that which is planted in it...

What do we as a PEOPLE value today? What did we value that we now have lost? Do we want to reclaim it? How do we reclaim it, given that we've done what we've done and are where we are?

                    "I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought
                      with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two thirds of the people of the earth
                      might be killed, but enough men (and women, I add) capable of thinking,
                      and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be

               restored."
                                                                                               Albert Einstein, 1945

THE AGE OF...AGING

2011-08-31T17:39:00.001-07:00

"...For I have known them all already, known them all:--

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So How should I presume?..."

T.S. Eliot from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Something in me is loathe to admit that one of my all-time favorite poems was written by a notoriously difficult man musing on his aging; musing on his approaching death. Still, I confess that I have loved this poem since my high school days: ah! the rhythm, the phrases, the images...

I never knew what Eliot meant by "I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." These days I think he might have meant that he was losing height...shrinking! I am losing height---but I am not shrinking. No! I tell myself that I shall not shrink. I shall not shrink.

It is now late in the year 2011. I was born even later in the year 1942. That should tell you something. A few days ago, I confronted myself in the far-too-big mirror in my bathroom. I looked closely at my face. I may have said aloud, "Thank God I don't look like my Mother." If I said anything aloud, I would have said that--because my narcissistic mother and I shared a lifelong dislike of one another--a definite repulsion of the other. She was borderline obese. I am not. PHEW! I continued to stare at my face and then (all this in the privacy of my over-lighted salle de bain) I clasped my hands to my mouth and garbled out, "Oh, good heavens! I look like my Grandmother Bailey!"

In that moment, I did. I looked like my maternal Grandmother! What an utterly and deeply disconcerting realization. I may look (a bit) like her but I am not a bit like my Grandmother. She was a forlorn and lonely woman whose husband abandoned her a few minutes after her prime---to pursue Las Vegas Showgirls and the like! I, on the other hand, abandoned three husbands in pursuit of a life I seem compelled to chase! Grandmother Bailey spent her remaining, self-created tragic decades (She lived well into her nineties) lamenting her lot in life.

I have rarely, rarely, rarely lamented my lot in life! Oh, I have lightly lamented the fact that I do not play the cello or the piano. And I frequently lament the fact that I am not fluent in a multitude of languages. But those are my only real and recurring lamentations regarding my personal day-to-day, decade-through-decade lot. Of course, I lament BIG non-personal things---like the ongoing destruction of the ecosystem and the greed of the super rich at the expense of those in need...things like that. You do too, don't you?

Now, at the extraordinary age of sixty-eight and three quarters, my memory is still excellent (Merci, Dieu!) --save for an occaisonal forgetful moment---like when I walk, with purpose, into a room and then pause to remember the purpose of the walk. At those times, I pause and in a snap, I remember. It comes back to me in a matter of a few seconds: Ah, yes! I wanted the scissors or a particular book or a phone number. Surely you have experienced something akin to this. I am comfortable knowing that I have tolerance for the quirky absent-mindedness of this quirky mind of mine. This is not Alzheimers, I tell myself. And then, to assure myself, I remember how much I remember: hundreds and hundreds of poems and song lyrics; the location in books of particularly important quotes; my exact location--along with everyone who was with me--when this or that monumental event occurred. Still, I have friends who talk of "senior moments" and I tell them to STOP using the phrase or the excuse. It's bad luck. I might suffer from a soupcon of superstition.

There is one good thing I keep forgetting. Sometimes I have to remind myself to forget it: I keep forgetting that I am no longer young. And when I remind myself that that is so, a whole long list of private do's and don'ts appears: don't even think about wearing those super short skirts or skinny tank tops or see-through blouses or strapless dresses or spandex anythings ever again and do remember to stand up straight, to drink plenty of water, to do crossword puzzles and to floss...What about a multi-vitamin!

"...There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet..."

More and more, I wonder about Botox, facelifts, injections of puffy stuff for my thin lips...but then I remember (see! I remember) that I want to be graceful in my aging...I want to be healthy. I want to celebrate the years. I want to drink life to the leas---however I don't want to drink foul tasting gooey green drinks with strange powders in them even if they are guaranteed to build strong muscles and make me irresistable to my peers (that actually doesn't seem too appealing!). Actually, I drank my foul tasting green drinks decades ago. Peyote.

Peyote taught me many things. It taught me to see between the molecules of a leaf. It showed me my (future) hundred year old face. It introduced me to the mysteries of the wind. It gave me a glimpse of my important place in the world. It instilled in me a sense of safety. I can definitely live with that. Until I can't.

This morning I awoke before the sun showed up at my house. My lower back felt stiff as I put on my slippers and went outside with my dog. "Good morning", I said aloud to the air. And then, on impulse, I sat on the dry ground, next to a small grove of junipers. I closed my eyes and listened...shhh...just a few birds chirping, preparing for the day. Like me. I tried to chirp convincingly. Nah! I touched the Earth and sifted some dusty dirt through my fingers. I felt the small stones, the pieces of twigs...And I felt my precious Earth turning, slowly and surely...eastwards...toward the Sun. I let the stffness in my back slip into the soft earth. Gone! I plucked a berry from the closest juniper branch and rolled it between my fingers... and the earth turned to meet the sunrise. With the light, I stood and walked to the road and then back to the house. With each step I marveled at the small pale coral clouds---like an arc of prancing feathers overhead. Then, in a kind of communion with the sunrise, I swallowed the berry. I hardly tasted its bitterness.

"Do I dare to eat a peach?"

T.S. Eliot asked. I do not ask. For breakfast, I slice a big firm Colorado peach into a bowl of semi-healthy flakes. I turn on the news. My right knee creaks a little as I lean down to pick up the dog dish. Maybe I'll wear that "knee thing" today to strengthen the lazy ligaments. I touch my hand to my back where the stiffness no longer is...The phone rings. It must be my daughter who knows that I am an early riser! I pick up my frothy latte, "Good morning, Pussycat..."

"And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep...tired...or it malingers,..."

THE SHELF LIFE OF FRIENDSHIPS

2011-08-20T17:33:00.249-07:00

And throughout all eternity

I forgive you, you forgive me.

William Blake (from My Spector)

All day today I have been reading about friends and friendships---and about the loss of friends and friendships. I've also been reading about forgiving and forgiveness. I have been reading on these topics in an effort to come to terms with my personal reality around these remarkable--borderline essential--aspects of Life.

In the past month or so, some really good, long time friends removed me from their friendship list. They stopped including me in their social events. They told mutual friends that I was now persona non grata in their book. Why? Because we turned up on different sides of an important and volatile socio-political world issue: The Palestinian/Israeli issue. I've also been "unfriended" on facebook by a good buddy who e-mailed me--after the fact--and told me that he could no longer tolerate my sympathetic posts about Gaza. And just tonight, coming out of a movie theater, two staunch and unyielding Zionists---long time friends with whom I have traveled, celebrated, danced and broken bread---saw me, made eye contact and turned away in a snub-like fashion!

...I walk to my car, unlock the door, sit with my head and hands on the steering wheel and cry...not because I feel snubbed; not because I realize I won't be among the guests at their lovely parties anymore but because I am filled with a familiar, yet confusing sense of existential sadness about everything---including the film I have just seen.*

Perhaps some older, sentimental readers might remember a book from the 60's called A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You. I'm thinking of it now. It is a very small format gift book that one might give to a friend or a child. It is profusely illustrated with images of sweet-looking people performing kind acts--like smiling or bestowing a kiss on a forehead or presenting someone with a bouquet of wildflowers...Actually, I made that part up. I don't recall any of the slim text nor any of the illustrations. I only remember the title...

Is it possible for a "friend" to like you---but not to like what you do or what you believe? I think the answer is sometimes...some friends...

When I returned from Gaza in 2009, I learned that a close friend had called me an anti-Semite. Ouch!! I called him immediately and arranged to meet and talk. He came to the Gallery. Because we have been friends for decades, we took time to speak and listen to one another. We acknowledged and explained our feelings, our opposing points of view. After a brief conversation, my friend--a creative and successful older Jewish man--embraced me. He said, "I know you're not Anti-Semitic...I know if they come to get me you will hide me." "Yes! I will hide you, I will hide you." I told him.

Yes, of course I would hide him. I would defend him and protect him with all that is in me...if they came to get him...if they came...

I think about his words and I recall the tremble in his embrace. My Palestinian position had wounded him. It wasn't so much a disagreement about politics. It was an absence of understanding about a soul issue. In the presence of his authentic, marrow-level fear, a piece of my ( perhaps narrow) point of view slipped off my know-it-all shoulder and fell away. My friend has something I do not have (never have had): a sense of belonging to something profound.--albeit, in my friend's case, the profound was profoundly painful!

My friend harbors an indelible fear of something shared by his "tribe": a deep dread of what might happen to him based upon what happened to his Jewish relatives in Germany, Poland, Hungary...He lives with this fear and from time to time it flares afresh--unsummoned--triggered by something as seemingly innocuous as reports of a friend's journey to Gaza---and her subsequently published cri de guerre. My quoted words triggered something in my friend, caused him to imagine that what happened in Europe, during the war, might happen again, might happen to him. The power of the "cry" we all know and repeat and associate with the horror of the Holocaust "Never Again, Never Again" holds no comfort for him. His truth trumps my experience...

I have no deeply imbedded personal, generational family history. I have never had a particular religion. I have never bonded with my Scotch-Irish ancestors. Sadly, in my family there were no stories of our Irish relatives and forebears (except the one about Uncle Buzzie, whom I never met and who was found dead in a Philadelphia flop house---having drunk a can of Sterno). I never bonded with my "white bread" ethnicity nor with the Protestant-style "Sunday School" I attended where I memorized Bible verses and Jesus songs, nor with my race nor even with my family. Directly put: I don't bond well.

"...Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world,

red and yellow black and white, they are precious in his sight,

Jesus loves the little children of the world."

Until recently, I assumed that I bonded well enough with friends---but now, I doubt it. (dubito ergo sum). I'm not certain I understand friendship in the way friendship is meant (?) to be understood. Solitude and meditation and loneliness (three daily components of my current life) can elicit thoughts of doubt in a person! On the totally positive side: I am beginning to understand LOVE.

It's only partially true that I don't bond well. I bond with the disenfranchised and with those who are hurt or stuck or vulnerable or oppressed. I bonded with the women and children of Palestine for example--and with their sons and brothers and fathers whose frustration leads them--not towards peace and comfort and safety---but farther away. And I bond with those who stand up to injustice---regardless of the consequences. I bond with those who work and pray for solutions to poverty, ignorance, powerlessness...wars. I bond with ideals more than with individuals.

I love whoever I'm with. When I'm not with them (not writing to them, talking with them, lunching with them) I file them away. I hardly think of them. Instead, I think of how to find cures for the socio/political diseases of our times...and how to mend the broken friendships in our world.

I confront my abiding sense of loneliness by embracing opportunities for friendships; all kinds, everywhere. I know that "nothing lasts forever." I understand that I am not the "decider" of how friendships should be...and I realize that I am frequently unsuccessful in presenting the true reasons for my search for friendship and acceptance and understanding.
I believe that we ALL are alone...and that "we are one"...and that no man (woman) is an island...and I understand the essence of the statements: "to each his (or her) own"...and don't judge anyone until you walk a mile in their shoes and...and...
and I guess it's true that "a friend is someone who likes you"...And I want to be that someone.

Every day, I move closer to being one who likes everyone...If I can't like them because of some personal hurt or slight I've experienced from them (real or imagined) or because of some "wrong" they have done or I have done, then...I will LOVE them.

I practice a personal love action when I am alone in a public place with lots of people moving this way and that---like in an airport or a market. I direct my gaze toward them as they pass in front of me...and I project these words at them (without moving my lips) "I LOVE YOU". It's surprising to discover how difficult it is to sustain the practice. Pretty soon my mind is wandering into petty judgements about their posture or their weight...

I struggle in these difficult times to find a meaningful place for myself--a meaningful and positive way of being in this world.

What kind of friend am I?

I wonder. Is there any friend to whom I would give a kidney? What do I do to make friends, support friends, love friends?

As I write this, I realize I'm not certain what I mean by friend or friendship...I notice that I really want to get away from this keyboard...make some tea or watch something on television and not think about people I've hurt or people who have hurt me and what--if anything--can be done about it. In fact: I'm going to save what I've written so far and go outside for a few minutes. It's raining here in the desert and I want to get wet...

* The Help

FIGURING THINGS OUT (while stumbling)

2011-08-16T21:07:00.355-07:00

What can I figure out today? I wake up with that question in front of me. I wrap the question around my morning routine...and my morning routine embraces the question. Think: yin/yang.

Every day, my dog and I take a walk with the rising sun. This morning our first view of the sky showed a flock of small silver-y clouds to the northeast. Overhead, a comforting coverlet of soft grey clouds holding some promising raindrops. As we reach the foot of the winding, gravel driveway, pink and coral edges begin to surround the small clouds. I stand on the quiet road and watch the sky fill up with a new sunrise---a totally original once-in-a-lifetime, perfect sunrise. I breathe this high desert air--deeply. I listen to the conversations of the birds and the hum of the distant highway getting up to workday speed. I break off a tiny twig from one of the still-dormant chamisas that lines the driveway. I turn it in my fingers...

Another Good Morning.

I begin to review my tasks and appointments for this day. The review takes me on side trips, tangents, dead ends. Many times I linger a bit too long at the dead ends. I have a need--a crazy need--to resurrect them. (A dead friendship; lost through carelessness or hastiness or thoughtlessness. A self-sabotaged opportunity; missed through laziness or forgetfulness.)

These admissions of failure prompt me to re-group; and I resolve (once again) to be more diligent, more present, more aligned with an open, unbiased bias (as if that is possible or makes sense; as if one could have a bias towards being unbiased? Or could one?)

What do I mean? What do I mean to say? To do? To figure out?

I'm searching for Truth. I'm yearning for it.

When I discover it--if I discover it--what will I do with it or about it? I wonder.

I reach into my store of thoughts and experiences---into the coincidences and accidents and happenstances contained in my past and present days. I do this in a never-ending (borderline naive) effort to figure out my destiny---my true purpose---my Life: My Life's Purpose.

"Is it possible?" I ask the day? Is it possible to know, with any certainty, my Life's Purpose---right now, while I am still here---somewhere between the beginning and end of this mysterious life span of mine?

For a long time, I have been conducting an ongoing informal survey among friends and acquaintences in which I pose the question: What is your Life's Purpose? Many people respond by saying, "to be happy". This strikes me as too vague---not enough, not a big enough answer. No, to be happy--just happy---is not enough for my life. At least not this morning! I'm already happy in most every sense of the word or concept of happiness. That's not to imply that I'm content! I keep telling myself, "There's something more to do, to be." And then I sing my own version of that famous Peggy Lee song, "Is That All There Is."

...In a remote area of Myanmar, in the Southern Shan State, I asked a young English-speaking Pa-o (ethnic minority) woman guide my question. Her answer: "To end the cycle of suffering". I couldn't quite relate---but then, I'm only a fair weather Buddhist. Many of my responding friends simply (and I don't mean "simply" in the simplistic sense of the word) want to be good parents or a great musician or a successful doctor, lawyer, painter...Sure, all well and good...but is that your Life's Purpose---your purpose in this mysterious world of ours? One friend said, "To be." That's it...for him his Life's Purpose was "To be." Ah, yes! A wonderful non-answer...in my world. Of course you want to be...but simply (?) Be? Don't you want to "Do"? Perhaps my question needs "to be" re-stated so I can get some new answers. I know how important properly phrased questions can be with regard to figuring things out; getting to the so-called crux of the matter. What is the crux? What is the matter?

When I began asking the Life's Purpose question (which was originally posed to me, by a man named Nicolai, long ago at a Peace meeting in Russia) I drafted my own response: My Life's Purpose is the search for and rescue of Truth and Beauty.

Lofty, huh? "Well, why not have a lofty pupose to one's life!" I say aloud, straightening up in this chair, making myself a bit taller...puffing up. Wait! Lofty is not the same as arrogant...is it? Recently I asked myself, "Well, Durham, how are you doing with that searching for and rescuing of Truth and Beauty thing? Tell me, did you just tap into your rambunctious super ego to formulate such a (ahem!) lofty-sounding purpose? You may have made up a phrase that could mean anything? Or nothing? Did you, Linda Durham, make a conscious choice to be so unconscionably vague! So SAFE!?"

I used to think the "purpose" was profound and noble. I want to be........noble! (This speaks to my personal and abiding loneliness trait of wanting to do something astonishing and beautiful and real). Maybe I could simply (I clear my throat) BE astonishing, beautiful and real. Nah! That's so fake!

I can't stop wanting to make a positive difference in the world. I want to wake up filled with kindness and forgiveness and clarity. And curiosity! Who, pray tell, am I meant to be? Is the answer from the Universe "Nothing"?Is the answer to it all "humility"? No, I cannot find my way to humility. Not now; not yet. (Aye, there's the rub!)

Humility seems so boring to me at this stage of my life. I equate it with a kind of surrender---one that will catapult me into failure and disappointment and expendability. My darn ego is not ready to be expendable although I understand that we are---all of us---expendable. But, please don't expend me yet, I tell myself. I have a feeling that I have some purpose that I have not yet approached; a purpose I have neither achieved nor understood and I am stretching to find it, to figure it out. I search.

This search takes me to far away places on the planet and in my mind. I stretch toward those distances...in an effort to make my life worthwhile---not merely to me, not to those who know me or like me, not to those I've helped or haven't harmed, not to those I've hurt...But to our World...

In the question is the answer/in the answer is the question. (Think: yin/yang again) In the wrong space, the profound becomes trite and the trite...I am profoundly stuck...Still, I am moving through remarkable, opportunity-filled days, losing time and choices with every moment and choice.

I am recalling a phrase from a child's prayer, one my mother taught me to say before going to sleep... "if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." Really? Is that a nice thing to teach a child! How many times did I recite those words before I figured out that I didn't want to assume my death might occur that night. In fact I wanted to assume the opposite. One more day, one more opportunity to figure it out. One more chance to hold the world as it holds me. One more day to begin to be...Or?

Following Orders

2011-08-05T15:05:00.056-07:00

"These, in the day when heaven was falling, 

The hour when earth's foundations fled, 

Followed their mercenary calling 

And took their wages and are dead." 

---A.E. Housman from Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

I've been thinking about the pros and cons of following orders...actually, I've been thinking more about the "cons" of following orders. This thinking has a lot to do with the interactions I had with Police and Coast Guards and U.S. Embassy Staff during my recent time in Athens as part of Freedom Flotilla II.

I think it's true that following orders can be a most dangerous step on a path leading--slowly, insidiously, perhaps inevitably--to the loss of personal honor, to the decline and fall of civilizations, to the perpetuation, crystallization of fear and loathing. Following orders cows people.

--from The papers of Mahrud ad Nil, 2006

The Greek Coast Guard Captain, whose vessel forced The Audacity of Hope to end its intended voyage to Gaza, yelled across an expanse of water to the Captain and Passengers standing on the bow of our boat that he was not in disagreement with our political views.

He was just following orders.

The Greek Police who forced nine "fasters" to end our peaceful demonstrations in front of the U.S. Embassy in Athens explained, as they half-carried and gently dragged us into waiting patrol cars, that they were just following orders.

The Police, in battle gear and gas masks, who used tear gas and batons to quel the People's Demonstration in Syntagma Square were only "following orders."

Not all orders are worthy of being followed. This is my strong belief.

An anti-terrorist task force member, who paid a visit to the Police station where six of us were being detained for making an unscheduled visit to the home of the United States Ambassador to Greece, told us that, if he were given orders to kill, he would kill. Oh, there was the caveat that he would not follow an illegal order. What is an "illegal order"? When someone--say a member of an anti-terrorist task force--is given a "legal" order to kill, does that killer know or care who is killed? What sort of person or target is killed? A terrorist? Can you imagine a context in which "terrorist" is just another name for "freedom fighter"?

What part does fear play in these scenarios?

In some people, fear of not following orders, is worse than following certain orders--orders that one knows are wrong. Sometimes the individuals giving orders are not honorable individuals. Sometimes they have sacrificed their honor out of fear and intimidation and are "just following orders" from some higher order-giving authority. (I am not suggesting God nor spirits nor even intuition. Although from time to time we read accounts of people who, having "heard voices," feel compelled to obey the orders they are given and to commit some uncivilized act). Sometimes "order givers" are afraid to fail to give the orders that they were ordered to give! Order-givers, although often feared by order-takers are frequently fearful of their superior Order Givers. What are the fears? When are orders good? When are they not?

Usually we don't know the true purpose of an order---for example: an order to fire on a group of peaceful unarmed or rock-throwing people. We don't know why the orders are given to drop bombs and white phosphorous on an already debilitated community. We justify. We pass the buck. Or, if we know, we don't know what to do or to say about that knowing.

Who gives the orders to the Members of The United States Congress? (...and we know that "orders" are given--along with consequences and threats.) Is it fear or plain old intimidation that causes elected officials to vote against the best interests of their constituents? Who instructs formerly decent men and women to cast their votes straight into the pockets of those who have the greedy goal to disempower the American citizenry?

I was listening to a Bob Dylan song earlier today: "You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody" He's right. But who, whom do we want to serve? Those who would diminish our opportunities to live a life of peace...who would deny us the opportunity to drink clean water, breathe fresh air, eat untainted food? Or to receive needed medical care? Who is making these rules and making other people follow them? Yes, we are "gonna have to serve somebody" but not just anybody!

Not long ago, I refused to go through the "Naked X-Ray" security machine at the Albuquerque Sunport. "Why?" the guard asked. "It's not dangerous...there's almost no radiation," he told me. I was far less concerned about the radiation than I was in the invasion of my privacy. For my safety? Really? I wanted to say---but didn't---"You think, because a few misguided/deranged people have succeeded in terrorizing or harming a few innocent people, that it's okay to make EVERYONE endure the demeaning, cattle-prodding treatment that is now an accepted everyday occurence for people needing to get from one city to another...people visiting their grandchildren, people going on their honeymoon, people on business?"

Instead, I "moo-ved" on to the groping procedure: A short, stocky matron was charged with the assignment of patting me down while two uniformed men watched. She was nervous as she put on thin plastic gloves and recited the procedure we were about to share. "I will be touching your whole body, starting with your hair...I will use the back of my hands to..." I started to cry. "WHAT IS MY COUNTRY COMING TO?" I exclaimed, as I held my arms out to the sides while she felt my breasts and my inner thighs. "I'm a sixty-eight year old grandmother," I continued. And then, while I reassembled myself, the matron said, in a very small voice, "I'm sorry. These are just my orders."

Who creates the system that causes everyday sensitive beings to perform acts against their better judgments? I felt sorry for the matron...and I wondered, as I made my way to the gate to board a plane to some unnamed destination, just how those Homeland Security employees felt about following orders...orders that turned innocent people into sheeple? Are these procedures really (I mean REALLY) about protecting travelers? Are these rules and regulations put in place to save lives? Or to sell Naked X-Ray machines? It seems we are always ordering new machines to tamp down, discourage or end the free expression that once was a basic tenet of These United States.

For many, in these difficult political and economic days, "following orders" is a two-edged sword. For the officers on the Police Force and the Coast Guards--who forced our boat back to a US and Greek run Military Compound--following orders is simply (?) their job. Sadly, these officers follow orders against their better political and philosophical judgement. They cannot afford to lose their jobs.

When The Audacity of Hope was forced to return to shore, our Captain and crew were arrested. The Passengers couldn't leave; we were required to remain in the compound. When our ground team showed up that evening, at the big metal gates of the compound, they were prevented from joining us on the boat. The guards were "just following orders." Whose orders? That night, we slept on the decks and in the lower cabin of our beloved boat. All night it rocked ever so gently, moored (locked up) in the Coast Guard Compound.

The next morning, I woke up early. My fellow passengers were still sleeping. I slipped off the Boat and wandered around the secure compound. When I walked past one of the imposing Coast Guard boats, a door opened and a man appeared. "KalimEra", I said. He returned my greeting. "You wouldn't happen to have any coffee would you? Yes, he said. A second passenger joined me and we gave our coffee preferences to the Coast Guard. In a few minutes, he returned with coffee in two dainty china cups with blue, Picasso-esque peace birds on them. We talked.

Syntagma Square

He acknowledged that he was one of the men on the Zodiac who participated in the forced return from our intended destination. He drove the Zodiac that delivered the black clad "Ninja" warriors who then boarded the Coast Guard vessel and aimed their big guns at us. He said he was on duty, following orders. When he was not on duty, he said that he spent time in Syntagma Square in solidarity with those who were demonstrating against the harsh austerity measures being imposed on the Greek People by their government. He "confessed" that he was "with" the people of Gaza in spirit---but he had to follow orders. He had a wife and a mortgage and a child and his salary was being cut by "thirty-five to forty percent." He didn't know what to do. He felt helpless. He shared a painful personal incident with us: While he was taking his four year old daughter for a walk, she saw a small toy in a store window. She wanted her Daddy to buy it for her. He was ashamed, to the point of tears, because he couldn't afford it.

He needs his job.

He has to follow orders...

MY HOUSE

2011-07-29T09:57:00.010-07:00

...is for sale. I don't want to sell it. I'd like to stay here forever and take care of it and fix things and plant things and re-paint and re-arrange the ten or so rooms and four baths. I'd like to turn this big old house into The Wonder Institute and hold salons here and have writers read their works here and people meet in the big living room to solve world and local problems and to discuss philosophical issues. If I could, in an ideal world (!!!) I would have a grand piano. It would be in front of the giant, slightly garish mirror that was in the house when I purchased it six years ago. I would hold small, exquisite concerts here. Sometimes my friends and their friends and I would move the big overstuffed furniture out of the way and roll up the rug and we would dance. And dance! Experts in all fields would present workshops in this house, this Institute. There would be workshops about painting and politics and poetry. Guests would share food and drinks and stories...We would gather by the fountain in the back patio or we would walk in the zen garden and meditation path that I meant to build...or we would sit on the west-facing portal and watch the sunsets...

It seems the sun is setting on those plans. My house is for sale...

This big house is the one asset I own that could---when sold---free me from the unpleasant debt that I incurred during my time as an Art Gallery Addict!

Yes, an "Art Gallery Addict"? A veritable junkie. I became addicted to the remarkable artwork I had the opportunity and privilege to show. I was always absolutely certain that I could sell it. And because of that certainty...I paid for art fairs and advertisements on my credit cards. I paid little or no attention to the insidious changes in the worsening world financial climate nor to the growing disarray of the big "A" Art Market. With conviction, I continued to plan and mount remarkable exhibitions. Every exhibition at LDCA received great coverage, great and enthusiastic attendance, great reviews...but (alas!) we failed to make enough money to cover the costs of running the Gallery. What then? Well, like all sorts of addicts, I would (bravely, foolishly?) put the financial "failure" behind me and look forward, with unshakeable optimism to the next show---in which I felt certain I could recover my losses and march forward (ironically, Marchforth, LTD was the name of my corporation) with more brilliant art and more wonderful ideas in mind and plenty of money in the bank.

But I digress...

Just now, I took a break and fixed a Greek omelette for a friend and myself. That delicious omelette was cooked on--what my son Rocky, a professional chef, called, "the best stove in Santa Fe," six burners; two ovens; a grill; a salamander...My friend and I ate our brunch at a small table in the enclosed front garden among some mature trees and bushes and hanging baskets of lobelia and big pots of geraniums...we talked and watched the hummingbirds and then we took our shoes off and sat on the grass...and drank some lattes and talked some more.

Now, I am back here in my study. I feel the soft light from the sunroom behind me. My two cats are sitting in the open screened windows, watching the lizards bask on the warm rocks...This morning, just after a brilliant orange and lavender sunrise hike, my dog Ruby and I watched five rascally ravens who had convened on the roof, over the library, squawking and talking..."nevermore..."

Oh, yes, my house will sell---perhaps on one of those upcoming perfect September days. I wonder who will be the next owner? Will they love the many perfect walls for art? The skylights? The five fireplaces? I have a strong feeling that this unusual house will sell to a writer or a painter or a philosopher. Surely the next owners will be creative collectors who love Santa Fe and all that it offers. Maybe they will have horses and will want to fix the neglected stable on the property. I know this singular (non-cookie cutter) house is perfect for a person who loves nature and animals and space and entertaining and quiet...

And when it sells, when someone special who wants a big and versatile house finds and falls in love with my wonderful house, what will I do? Where will I go? I'm thinking about a single line from an e.e. cummings poem that I have always loved:

"Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience.."

BUNNY

2011-07-26T07:33:00.032-07:00

Sierra Vista is a small residential home for people with either Alzheimers or Dementia. It's located on a semi-rural road at the edge of Santa Fe. My friend Bunny lives there now. I visited her a few days ago. Her son John and his girlfriend were just leaving as I reached the "secure" front door. We hugged and exchanged a few words. John told me that Bunny had not slept well the night before so she was tired this morning and might not be very responsive. I was prepared. The day before, a mutual friend told me that Bunny was...uh... "fading fast."

"Fading fast," I know what that means. It means that my friend is going to die soon.

The receptionist on duty buzzed me in. She escorted me through a labyrinth of narrow halls to Bunny's room; a cell-like space with a single bed, a small chair and a bedside table. There was my dear friend Bunny, struggling to sit up...She was barely aware of me at first. I sat on the edge of the bed and put my arm around her unbelievable thinness and held her. I used my most powerful memory and concentration skills to superimpose the beautiful woman that Bunny always was over the skeletal, death-like greyness that she has become.

I'm so full of emotions - emotions definitely triggered by seeing and holding Bunny - but emotions about something beyond Bunny: sadness, awe, confusion. I talked to her. I held her. We rocked a bit and she mumbled words that I couldn't understand. She said them softly, in a comforting voice. She was calm and far away. She listened to me and responded with garbled syllables as I talked about the weather and complimented her emerald green shirt that complemented her green eyes...and those eyes were focused way beyond the small room in which we sat and gently rocked..where? I don't know.

Oh, my God, my friends are dying...we're coming of age: The Age of Dying. I'm going to die at some point and I can't begin (well, yes, I am beginning) to understand that phenomenon. I 'm thinking of one of my favorite poems published over 30 years ago: AUBADE, by Phillip Larkin (click here to hear Larkin read it on YOUtube). Such a beautiful poem. I memorized it years ago, to recite for the friend who mailed it to me - along with a brief note, "I can't imagine the world without this poem," he wrote. Neither can I.

"...unresting death, a whole day nearer now, making all thought impossible but how and where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: Yet the dread of dying and being dead, flashes afresh to hold and horrify..."

Bunny was always thin - enviably thin - and beautiful. She was tall and graceful and I want to add "willowy" because "willowy" is such a wonderful adjective and it perfectly describes the remarkable friend I met more than forty years ago. Bunny. She had to be called "Bunny" or something like Bunny because "Alberta," her given name, was all wrong.

Years really do disappear, don't they? They collapse into incidents: parties, people, conversations. Even long full years of friendships collapse into imperfect memories that appear and fade in our minds. It's not possible to stretch out the memories into real time. So much real time is gone.

Gone...

What do I remember about those years of friendship? We were colleagues in the Art Gallery world. And we were confidantes. In the early years of our friendship, we were part of the big escape from "the straight life" that brought so many of us to the mountains and high desert of New Mexico. We came from all over. We knew one another by first names or nicknames. Bunny and I must have met at one of the big, informal, bring-a-dish potlucks where there was always plenty of pot and too many watermelons and not enough homemade bread. And there was always music. Lots and lots of music.

Bunny was a beautiful widow who lived with her young son in the rugged, not-too-friendly-to-outsiders mountain village of Truchas. I was an ex-New York glamour girl living off the grid in the desert and sandstone land near Cerrillos. Most of the people we knew in those long ago days were some combination of misfit, adventurer, hippie, anthropologist, drifter or draft dodger. Many of us had abandoned or narrowly escaped the middle class lives of our parents and moved to "The Land of Enchantment" in search of an aspect of ourselves that couldn't bloom in the mainstream.

As the years passed and as our children grew and as the world changed, we changed. We got straight jobs, we went back to graduate school, we moved away, we died...before we even thought about dying, we lived, we laughed, we made love.

Bunny and I loved artists - perhaps even more than we loved art. We discovered ourselves at the right and wrong place, at the right and wrong time. And we created galleries where people came and drank our wine and looked at our exhibitions and bought the paintings and drawings and sculpture we showed. We did this way before most everyone who does it now did it...and now we don't do it anymore. What do we do now?

Bunny is drifting/dreaming/sliding through her last days...attendants in red attendant uniforms lift her into a wheelchair, put her feet in rubber slippers, straighten her legs...and I wheel her down the narrow hallways, into the day room, where two residents ("We don't call them residents here," a supervisor told me. "We call them 'Elders' It's more respectful.") excuse me, where two Elders sit in front of a big screen TV singing along with a sing along DVD. We take up a position near the big picture window and look out at the blue sky and the clouds.

"Clouds" Bunny whispers. I think that's what she says. I hold a straw and a glass of juice to her lips. She drinks a sip or two. I hold her hand and we look out the window - past the gated pen with two little goats eating something out of a big metal bucket, past the fence, past the parking lot...

"Clouds" she says...softly.

REFLECTIONARY*

2011-07-25T13:51:00.003-07:00

* one who reflects

Hello! My name is Linda and I'm a Reflectionary. I reflect on things and I reflect things. Right now, I'm reflecting on the fact that I yearn to be a Revolutionary. A full-time, full-blown Revolutionary. I'm not there yet. Before I can move from my Reflectionary place as one who inspects and reflects and dissects, I must identify my intended revolutionary path. It can't be a violent path. It can't be loud and rude. Violence and rudeness don't suit me. At this reflectionary moment in my time---that time being a Monday in late July---I am reflecting on empathy. Yes, EMPATHY. That is my path, I tell myself as I sit here in my study, with my dog Ruby sleeping nearby and some Wonder Woman ephemera staring down at me from high on a shelf, over a collection of books about mountain climbing disasters, Patagonian travels, Haitian voodoo and Myanmar art...Empathy.

The word PATH is right there, resting in the comforting arms of Empathy.

A few seconds ago, with my fingers poised over the keyboard, I was about to write to encourage the few readers, who might find their way to this wonder blog, to "be more empathetic" to take time to empathize with those in our world who are living in war zones or who are starving in drought plagued regions or who have grave illnesses or fears...But it's too soon for me to ask anyone to do that---too soon to tell anyone my views on the importance of empathizing with others who share the world with us. Too soon---because I must first do more and feel more (empathize more) than I have in the past. I must first understand more deeply what that means...and I must acknowledge that my personal empathy switch turns on and off---depending upon my own state of mind, of understanding.

To be empathetic can be dangerous.

For example: one can forget to look up and down while crossing the street if one has just looked at images in a magazine of skeletal children crying in hunger. Or one can damage one's credit by writing checks to humanitarian aid organizations or peace and justice organizations instead of writing checks for one's utilities or car payment. One can miss a dentist appointment while demonstrating for the end of war on a street corner somewhere. Or, one can get one's name on a government watch list by declaring, on certain social networks, that one is in stark disagreement with certain international governmental policies...Even if these are ways of acting on righteous empathetic impulses (and I am personally familiar with these examples) they can be dangerous. Dangerous! These small acts of empathy can impact one's life in a BIG and challenging way.

However: eventually, if we are lucky, we reach a certain age (an age like mine, for instance) and, at that point, if one has resigned or retired from one's so-called career (like I have recently done) and if one cries at the sadness of helpless children and at the struggles of mothers and fathers in ravaged lands and if one abhors the carnage of war and the costs of such carnage (as I absolutely do)...then perhaps one is ready---or preparing to be ready (having duly "reflected") to let go of the art and the books and comforts of a relatively safe life and to go gently into a life of graceful, non-violent, thoughtful, loving, generous, effective REVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS and ACTION.

The transformation (for me) is beginning!

Arresting Scenario | Part I

2011-07-08T09:40:00.005-07:00

The adventures and accomplishments of the passengers on The Audacity of Hope are many and varied. We did so much. We practically defied a basic principle of physics that asserts that one cannot be in two places at one time. And yet...I have a memory of being in Athens’ Syntagma Square rallying with the people of Greece while, at the same time, being with the “Fasters” across from the United States Embassy--singing and chanting.

I am still filled with the electricity generated by the power of standing and demonstrating in solidarity with the people of Greece whose government has largely forsaken them. Everything was happening so fast! Sparks of Revolution were everywhere. We were all moving, moving, moving from our boat to various meetings in four or five different locations, through the mazes of the Metro and the amazing streets of Athens and Parama and Piraeus...And so it seemed as if we were in meetings and marching simultaneously--in defiance of natural law!

This morning, here in Santa Fe, I am sifting through all the actions I can recall from those weeks in Greece--as well as through all the emotions I'm feeling about those extraordinary days with the remarkable people who are part of The International Flotilla to Gaza. No, we didn't get to Gaza. No, we didn't break Israel's illegal blockade. However, we did get our thousands of messages of love and solidarity to the people of Gaza. And we brought to the attention of the World the untenable situation that exists for the Palestinians. Sadly, the gentle mission of our wonderful boat was thwarted again and again by "unknown" forces---evil, greedy and paranoid forces. Okay, they must not go unnamed. I will name them: the Israeli government and their political supporters and miscellaneous lackeys abroad--including my government.

My government! I remember how proud I once was to be a citizen of the United States of America. That was long ago, when I was a child...long, long ago when I was taught that the definition of "propaganda" was the persuasive, misleading lies that bad governments (enemies) spouted. We (the great and honorable USA) told the truth and the bad guys lied. I am understandably less naive today and I realize that we (or more precisely, certain powerful forces in our government) are the bad guys. I know this deep in my heart. We are not the only bad guys but we surely rank near the top of the list.

Our boat was prevented from sailing for no valid reason.

While still in the harbor, we were forceably turned back by menacing commandos on Greek vessels. We read the reports that Israel issued stating that the human rights passengers on our little boat were carrying sulfuric acid--which, they claimed, we were planning to throw on the Israeli Naval Forces if The Audacity of Hope was stopped from proceeding to its intended destination. The US Embassy gave only nervous, superficial, impotent lip service to our Delegation when we respectfully requested a statement of safe passage for our voyage. My saddest, most disheartening fears were realized: Human Rights and Peace and Justice are not the true interests and issues of my government, of most governments. Money and Power---those are the issues that our Embassies support and protect. These facts burned and turned into a revised mission on land: Peaceful Demonstrations.

We demonstrated for the release of Captain John, who was arrested and charged with embarking from port without permission and endangering the passengers on our boat. Despite numerous requests for assistance from our Consulate, none was forthcoming. Captain John remained in jail with no visit from anyone in the Embassy. This was inexplicable to those who believed (obviously mistakenly) that part of the mandate of the US Consulate was the aid and protection of Americans in distress abroad! Captain John was experiencing distress!

We could not bear to stand by idly and so we staged some protests. Non-violent, peaceful, chanting, sign-holding protests. Some of us began a fast and a sit-in/sleep-in at the Embassy. After most of a day of peaceful fasting and sign-holding and sleeping, the Greek police took us to jail. They were just following orders, they said. We sang scores of songs in the police headquarters and eventually we were released (I don't think it was because of our singing ability---some of our harmonizing was quite excellent!). It was after 3am when I got back to my hotel. Next day: continued disappointment that no help was forthcoming from our Embassy. And so, more demonstrations, more fasting...

On the third of July, my friend Senator Tom Udall made a personal call to Ambassador Daniel Smith in Greece on our behalf to check on the status and condition of Captain John. By e-mail I learned that the Ambassador had conveyed to the Senator that he was aware of the situation and everything was being handled. Really? That certainly was not the case as we saw it. And so, a few of the fasters (and friends of fasters---for by now I had had a Greek salad!) decided to go to the Ambassador’s house.

It was the 4^th of July. Independence Day!

There were six of us. We had a few small signs and an American flag. Four members sat across from the entrance to the Ambassador’s house in a small park filled with feral cats. Ray McGovern (a retired CIA Analyst and Vietnam Veteran) and I held hands and crossed the street . We did not speak with the military-garbed men in the small guard house adjacent to the big metal gates in front of the residence. We went straight to the residence and rang the doorbell. Two Brinks guards appeared.

“Good afternoon,” I offered, “ I am Linda Durham from Santa Fe, New Mexico and this is Ray McGovern from Arlington, Virginia. We’d like to speak with Ambassador Smith.”

“That is not possible.”

“I think he may be expecting me to call on him. I know Senator Tom Udall spoke with him and mentioned that I was here in Athens.”

“You must make an appointment at the Embassy.”

"Yes, we did try that…unsuccessfully...but it’s the Fourth of July. We’d just like a few minutes to speak with him.”

This conversation went back and forth and nowhere…

Meanwhile, the four other members of our visiting party were quietly holding up a few signs (LET FREEDOM RING, FREE GAZA...) while sitting in front of the bright orange Audacity of Hope life preserver ring that was one of our props at the fasting site. After a few more unsuccessful exchanges with the Brinks puppet men, we were told to move back from the gate to permit a large black SUV to enter the compound. Ray spoke to the black tinted windows.

“Is that you Mr. Ambassador? May we have a word with you?”

No response!

“Are you too cowardly to speak with us?!” He challenged.

At that utterance, the police/secret service pounced on him. They almost knocked him over! They forced him to the other side of the street while I remained in front of the closed gate---very near the doorbell. I watched as the guard patrol tested for explosives under the SUV. And I watched as the inner gates opened revealing a disappearing protective barrier and a beautiful garden and winding driveway. I rang the doorbell again. Mean-looking plainclothesmen scurried from one mysterious door to another. They didn’t look at me.

I turned to check on my fellow fasters and saw that they were being shoved and forced and partially carried towards a veritable "flotilla" of waiting patrol cars. Carol, Ridgely, Debra, Ray, and Ken were agreeing to leave---but No! The police--and an assortment of strong armed tall guys in dark clothes--were demanding that the peaceful group get in the cars. I started back across the street and two big men grabbed me...

Cont'd in: Arresting Scenerio | Part II

2011-07-08T09:40:00.001-07:00

Arresting Scenario | Part II

2011-07-08T08:58:00.003-07:00

Cont'd from Arresting Scenario | Part I

____________________________________________

“Okay, I’m leaving,” I said. “Let go of me. Oww! You’re hurting me.”

A tall unnecessarily nasty man squeezed my arms and lifted me off the ground!

“Let me go. I’ll leave. I didn’t do anything. I’m a grandmother…”

I said a whole string of things like that. And then I started to cry (I’m a trained actor!)

To no avail.

The six of us were driven to the same police station we had visited (!) the night before. But this time things were different. The police didn’t speak to us in the patrol car. They were decidedly unfriendly when we reached the station. Unlike our first visit the previous night, we were not allowed to sing (it would disturb the prisoners downstairs we were told by the larger of the two female officers). We were not offered ice water and we were not invited to sit in the little office where our songfest the night before took place. Our passports were collected and one by one we were called into the office to give our parents names and other useless information. Ridgely refused to tell them her father’s name. You go girl, I thought and wished I had not given them the names Everett and Lenore. I did note that they misspelled both names. Soon they returned our passports.

We waited. I snapped a couple of quick photos in defiance of the instructions not to take any photos. As long as I was being held for civil disobedience, I thought I might as well be civilly disobedient! We were asked for our passports a second time. And then a third time. All questions about why were met with non answers. Orders from somewhere else, from some unknown power authority. From whom, I wondered? Hillary? The Ambassador? Netanyahu? Papandreaou? Who knows!

We did have the very interesting opportunity to speak with a handsome and strong-looking member of a terrorist task force.

"Are we terrorists?” I asked. Yes, in some eyes, no doubt, we are. We are members of a small band of U.S. citizens who, in the eyes of our government, were meddling in foreign policy. Maybe so. Maybe it needs some good old-fashioned meddling by a few brave people of conscience!

That’s who we are.

We are a motley assortment of people who care about others—about the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the prisoners of conscience…In this particular case, our mission was (and remains) to free the people of Gaza. They have been living under the control of mighty Israel for far too long. I believe this group is aligned with many missions that fight for peace and justice for the oppressed---wherever they are.

Eventually we were released. We went back to our boat…we went to the Internet…we went to Syntagma Square to stand with the remarkable organizers of the Greek People’s Movement. They will (THEY WILL) overcome the oppressive government that has taken their money and put it in the pockets of the very rich. There will be a revolution…This time it will be televised. I believe…I have to believe that they and we will surely OVERCOME!

Deep in my heart, I know that our leaders are totally aware of the injustices under which they have been operating for far too long. They must know. The fact that power and greed and evil trump fairness and justice is the very reason I can no longer simply read the papers and say, “Tsk, tsk! Somebody should do something.”

I’m somebody. So are you! We must stand and march and speak out and write and DO SOMETHING!

Because if we don’t...

Ninja-style Commandos/Up Close and Personal

2011-07-02T04:13:00.002-07:00

The Audacity of Hope had barely left the port in Parama, to the cheers of the passengers and well-wishers on shore, when the first speedboat interception occured.

Go back, they demanded. But no. We did not go back.

Soon there was a bigger, more powerful Coast Guard boat. The radio channels appeared not to be working and so communication between the Captains of the two vessels (ours and theirs) took place across a small expanse of sea. We listened, we stood at the bow of the boat and we listened...the Greek Captain said that the papers for our boat were not in order...but yes, they are in order. We have completed the inspections.

"No, please go back to Parama, I beg you." he finally said.

These comments followed a long exchange in which five or six passengers spoke by bull horn imploring the Greek Captain to let us go...Of course he was not one to disobey orders...Go back, go back.

Still, we did not go back. We did not go back. We were fearful of what might befall us if we went back to that port, we told him. There has been too much sabotage and attempted sabotage to our boat---and to the other boats in this Flotilla.

Athens is hot. The boat is hot. We feel the oppressive (and almost unbelieveably intrusive) power of the Israelis. No one anywhere in the world, who is paying attention to this action in Athens and its ports can fail to notice that this dirty business smells like Netanyahu, et cetera. In the middle of their own revolution, the good people of Greece have few doubts that this is the doing of those connected to the Israeli Military Force. The Israelis are meddling. And their meddling is working! How sad is that commentary! How desperate they must be. How fearful of our hopeful little boat they must be to meddle so vociferously in the affairs of the Greeks. Desperate and effective! Our boat is not going to sail from Greece without a major change that, as yet, we can neither discover not anticipate.

Before long, a Zodiac of Commandos joined the Coast Guard vessel (the one with the gentle,imploring Captain...) "Please go back, I beg you!" he said again.

Dressed Ninja-style with guns and other weapons strapped neatly to their persons, they boarded the Greek Coast Guard vessel and pointed their intimidating weapons at us...

To be continued...

LIES, SPIES AND SABOTAGE

2011-06-30T23:06:00.001-07:00

When one is in the middle of a revolution or a world class event---I mean right in the middle, near the tear gas and the TV cameras, the World still seems like the World---only faster, louder, stronger, hungrier, uglier and, of course, sadder. I am in that imploding/exploding world of revolution. Signs of all kinds are visible and audible everywhere. Everything happens in the instantaneous now. Seconds pass. One breathes or doesn't breathe. One retreats to the edges of the action---or one moves to the center, or to the far (progressively farther) progressive left. One goes to where the good people are. The people whose lives are deeply effected by the greed of the few. Really. How is it that we (the righteous people on the left) have allowed--continue to allow--the people on the right to steal from us. Ah, Revolution!! Someone goes to jail for a simple, but absolutely necessary crime of stealing bread while another steals a brother's life, a sister's opportunity, a grandparent's pride, a father's livelihood, a mother's courage...No, they mustn't steal our courage. We must not let them take our cake!

Organize. That's what they (who are not our friends, our supports) do. Slowly, greedily with malice aforethought they convince the masses that everything is theirs: every country, every army, every bank, every school...They have taken our schools and now we are turning out drones. They have coveted our ingenuity and now that ingenuity is disappearing in the fear-mongering climate that "they" created. Will we awaken? Is there a way to stand and face and overthrow those who would oppress us?

There must be. And that is what we seek. We seek to see through and to expose the lies...to bring the dark liars into the light...to disempower those who would sabotage the efforts of the righteous!

I am in Athens, dreaming of Gaza...I want to pray---not to a god nor to THE GOD whom so many worship (although for the life of me I cannot understand how they know these unknowable things). Still, I want to hope or wish or dream or yes, even pray, that the people of the world will awaken and will begin--very surely---to expose the lies, the spies...to uncover the sabotage that threatens to blow us away. May it lose its power as it is exposed to the clear light of a new day! Then perhaps we will re-invent the world we all thought we had...a world without end, without end, without end....

FIRE! In The Whole...World!!

2011-06-28T02:54:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd be in Gaza by now...Or, if not in Gaza, in an Israeli prison. I thought our ship The Audacity of Hope would have sailed days ago...But no, the passengers and press and crew of our US Boat to Gaza are still in Athens...attending press conferences, demonstrations, meetings and workshops while we untangle the contrived complaints about the seaworthiness of our little ship and while we continue to work to expose the bully tactics and chicanery perpetrated on this Freedom Flotilla by the Israeli government. How many times do we have to stand up and tell the world that the Israeli blockade of Gaza waters is illegal. Illegal! How many times do we have to repeat that our US to Gaza group is composed of peaceful, human rights-seeking individuals (NOT Terrorists) from New England to Hawaii. What will it take to convince the so-called "Powers That Be" that our peaceful and just mission is to sail to Gaza, to deliver letters of solidarity to the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children who have been imprisoned (IMPRISONED ILLEGALLY) in that small strip of land for too long? How long will it take to expose the bullying and criminal behavior of the Israeli government?! And how long will it take for honorable people everywhere to acknowledge the reprehensible complicity of our government in the continuation of this terrible siege on the people of Gaza! I see such corruption in the actions and non-actions of our State Department. How dare they threaten us--U.S. Citizens--- for wanting to sail our American flagged, peaceful little ship to Gaza---through INTERNATIONAL waters---not through Israeli waters!!
Here in Athens, boats in the Flotilla are being sabotaged...misinformation is being spread through Israeli and US channels. And...

At home, in Santa Fe, while fires of freedom are ignited in Santagma Square and while the people of Greece begin a general strike...my New Mexico neighborhood is burning. All I can say right now, as my time in this Internet cafe expires, is WAKE UP Everyone! Wake up! This is your world that is being destroyed by the Greed of the few!! I want to post this---even though it's incomplete---in case I never get back here...

DICKENS KNEW: thoughts from an Athens diary...

2011-06-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Dickens knew--way back when--that these were and are the best and worst of times. Same situations. Different Revolutions! There must be revolutions--to restore balance, to redefine the important concepts of human cultural existence. How do they occur? Where do they begin? Somewhere near the start of a Revolution, there must be awareness; a growing-into-consciousness awareness by the people...by some of the masses but also by some of those who stand a bit apart and take note and bring a bit of focus to the fore---with compassion and passion---with vision and intent. It is always seemingly impossible in the beginning. The odds are such that no small efforts, no nascent ideas, no movements can be seen--nor seen to have impact. Things change slowly until they change quickly. The complexity of an action, an inevitable action--anticipated and unexpected--spilling over the vessel of tolerance, indifference, ignorance, helplessness, poverty of experience--spills over and begins (always beginning) to flood the collective consciousness and unconsciousness...
Movements mature---gain momentum--like now, like in this 2011 world in which I begin to notice (really notice) what had existed beyond my seemingly safe personal world of exploration---insideoutside---one becoming the other. I become the other: The disenfranchised. The dejected. The one who yearns. "The wretched refuse"...
How slowly, yet how instantaneously, I walk and stumble and fall into expanded meaning; expanded opportunity---opportunity to participate in a revolution of spirit, of consciousness. And this will not be televised. Not this; not this awareness, not this metamorphosis, not this cell-by-cell transformation from the old "there" to the ever-changing NOW to the new "there"! The manifestival is manifestable! Slowly, slowly--as all instants go---not with a bang, but also not (we pray, we wonder, we hope, we fear) with a whimper.
I find myself in a circle of wondrous people, wondering, "What is my role, my purpose?"
What was it that "Bible Ruth" said? "Whither thou goest, I will go...Thy people will be my people." My people. These are some of my people: Ray and Medea and Hagit and Ann and Ken and Lisa and Richard and Kathy...and, now, to find my place among these new people of my people: to follow; to learn to lead; to leave the empty fullness of my past and to embrace the full emptiness of the void---not in the sense of endings nor of death---but in the arms of a revolution of spirit...
Help me, oh spirit, oh future truth, to be a good "drop" in the overflowing vessel of a revolution (a revelation) of good.
Do. Do not. Do not go. Do not go gently...

IN THE BEGINNING WAS...THE OPPORTUNITY

2011-06-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

There it was...early one January morning...in my e-mail in box: an invitation to apply to be a Passenger on the US Boat to Gaza---part of an International Peace Flotilla with the ambitious mission to end the Israeli blockade of Gaza and to focus the attention of the world on the plight of the people in that beleaguered part of the Middle East.

I filled out the five page application, listing my qualifications, references, considerations, reasons, viewpoints… In February, two organizers interviewed me by telephone. Then they contacted and questioned my personal references. In March I received the welcome news that I had been selected to be a Passenger on The Audacity of Hope. I was thrilled. I continue to be thrilled. It is an honor to have the opportunity to sail for Peace and Justice with other non-violent Peace advocates who decry the politics and persecution that has created an ongoing and untenable situation for the people in that embattled part of our world.

Some history: In 2009, I went to Gaza as part of a Delegation led by Code Pink and hosted by UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Agency). We went to celebrate International Women's Day with the women of Gaza. This was right after Operation Cast Lead---the over-the-top retaliatory bombing raids by the Israeli Military that destroyed much of the infrastructure of Gaza. It also damaged schools, homes and farmland. It killed more than a thousand people---including hundreds of children. Because Israel controlled all the borders (with some cooperation from Egypt)--including the sea lanes, there was nowhere for people to run; nowhere to hide. This small strip of land is widely known as "the largest open air prison in the world." Very few people in Gaza are free to leave that small strip of land--to seek medical help, to visit family, to pursue education...This collective punishment of the people by the people of Israel must be an illegal act. It is one of many illegal acts being committed by Israel against a whole group of (mainly---okay, I said Mainly!) innocent men, women and children. Children!

During my time in Gaza, I made bread (and friends) with many women and girls in Rafah City. I sang and laughed with scores of children in the ruined town of Jabaliya. Our group met with many representatives of NGO’s. And we saw, first hand, the unacceptable conditions under which families were living. We cried with Mothers, listened to students, grew angry and concerned on hearing about the constant shortage of food and re-building materials and medicines. It is not right for this tragic situation to continue. It is not right that all supplies coming in to Gaza must be monitored by the Israelis---who severely and arbitrarily limit needed or desired foodstuffs from entering the isolated Strip. No pasta one week. No chocolate the next…Never enough medicine. Never.

Having witnessed the unhealthy conditions under which family after family was living (subsisting) and having seen the eager, hopeful faces of the children, I wept. And I said---and I say, “This is not right…Something must be done…Someone must do something…”

I am someone who is moved to do something. NOW! I have the opportunity and I am ready to stand up and to say aloud, to my countrymen and countrywomen and to my government, “This is not right. This must end."

Surely there is a better way to move towards resolving the conflicts that have caused so much pain and hardship to so many, for so long. Not just Palestinians. Israelis too. The whole beautiful region yearns for freedom from fear. We all long for Peace. For Safety. For Clean Food and Water. For Access to Education. And...for the right to worship and celebrate in one's chosen way.

This must come to pass.

Why is Peace so elusive, I wonder? Everyone claims to want to live in Peace. Yet, look at our troubled, suffering world! Surely we do not believe that human nature abhors a peaceful , cooperative community. Where is the Peace we long to have? Is it in the pockets of a few people who want to turn our world into some sort of Plutocracy? From time to time, I recall a jingle I learned in grammar school: “The World would stop if it were run by those who say it can’t be done.” I think about that all the time…Something must be done! Some of us have begun to put ourselves into action---against injustice.

So, now I am packed and ready to fly to Greece (on Monday June 20^th) to join a remarkable cross-section of American citizens who will board The Audacity of Hope and sail, with an International Flotilla, on a mission of Peace and Justice. I am putting my body, my eyes and my abiding vision for Peace at the epicenter of the conflict--which has festered far too long. Perhaps my naïvete and “cockeyed optimism” along with the insistent (but always non-violent) voices on board our boat might (just might) move the dialogue a step closer to resolution, reconciliation, celebration. It is clear to me that the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict of bullying and retaliating; of anger, hatred and retribution cannot continue unabated. It has brought debilitating fear and tragedy to virtually all who live in the region. I have the audacity to hope that our voices can be heard and that our true and honorable intentions can be felt, understood…and then perhaps a new and better dialogue can begin.

I know, I know; many have tried and many have failed. Still…

This Mother and Grandmother…dreams of Peace and understanding, of forgiveness and justice.

I repeat a Goethe couplet to myself almost daily. I have done so for years: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” And so, I go…boldly, proudly, without hesitation to join the other Passengers, the Crew, the Media and Support Staff as we take on this historic initiative…as we walk our talk and as we sail our tale!

May I take your prayers and good thoughts with me?

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE FLOATS MY BOAT

2011-05-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, "The Audacity..."

To think that a group of socially conscious, peace-loving, human rights activists could bring the dream of this remarkable and totally ambitious project to fruition is audacious in the first degree. But we have done it.

Almost.

We are filled with hope that our vision, our fund-raising efforts, our resolve, our intentions will meet with success...and that The Audacity of Hope (the US Boat to Gaza) along with the other boats in the International Peace Flotilla will sail into Gaza---undetered by Israel's military might...notwithstanding the thinly veiled threats from the Israeli government that have made their way into some of the mainstream press. May the threats dissipate (like most of yesterday's news).
As a passenger on this forthcoming voyage, I float the vision of our boat being met at the shores of Gaza by hundreds and hundreds of smiling, cheering Palestinian friends: children, parents, grandparents...Oh, it's time---it's way past time---to end the illegal blockade that the Israelis have enforced these past years.

I want to be there when it happens.
I want to be with others from the international community who have put their lives on pause in order to stand up for that which is right and just and possible---in these remarkable times, when all things seem possible---as soon as one thinks past the idea of the impossible!

Yes, I am one who believes that peace and reconciliation are possible. I believe that it is FEAR (largely irrational fear) that causes people with good hearts to strike out against other people of good will. All this in search of safety...

We can all trace those ancient and irrational (in my opinion) bad feelings and lack of trust back to the days of our ancestors---on all continents! And we can point to numerous current instances of violence and ill will on all sides of all conflicts. These conflicts are largely (if not entirely) the result of mutual fear and distrust. Kernals of fear of "the other" are the true bad seeds of our times. To ask how "it" started...or to ask "why?" is to drown ourselves in pieces of facts and fictions that fail to lead to the end of anger, distrust, tragedy. To me, it seems that all humanity suffers when fear-generated hatred is tolerated, justified and exalted through the angry use of bombs and stones and rockets and guns and sticks and white phosphorous...As a People, have we become inured to the hardships and devastation that result from the loss of willingness to find ways to co-exist peacefully!?

I am a Grandmother. I almost wrote "just a Grandmother" because I used to think (in my twenties, thirties, forties) that Grandmothers didn't count...They were old and they were over, relegated to knitting and baking and hobbling around! Where did I get such an idea!! I am a non-knitting, non-baker and decidedly non-hobbling Grandmother who's "gotta lotta livin' to do.." and I want to do it by gathering up some of the experience and grace and courage that I've acquired along my many decades and I want to use those traits and qualities to stand with others who seek whole-heartedly and work ceaselessly for a better world--for all of us. I am not on the side of this or that country; this or that political party; this or that religion. I'm on the side of fairness, love, cooperation, forgiveness, acknowledgement. I'm on the side of love. I Love You and your efforts to find connection and understanding and time to unlock the truth and beauty that---I know, with certainty---dwells in all but a very, very few hopeless and sad souls.

I'm going to Gaza with love in my heart: love for the Muslims, Jews, Christians and Atheists who are affected by this terrible war; love for those who would condemn me and those who have condemned me; love for those who hold me in the light and for those who do not even know that there is a struggle that, left to fester even more than it has, could infect the whole region, the whole world...

I am going to be a clear and kind witness...I will return to share what I discover on my physical, emotional and spiritual journey.

May this be a successful, non-violent excursion into the heart of celebration and "siblinghood"...'Cause that's what Life should be!!!

I am your sister. Really!!!

Possessions of My Unprepossessing Self

2011-05-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Everything! I want to sell everything I have. I want to sell all the Art I've collected over the years: the elegant Robert Kelly painting with the references to the Persian Gulf and the monoprint---but not the small blue painting Robert gave me for the 25th anniversary of the Gallery. I'll store that somewhere. But everything else I will sell including the Wifredo Lam, the Jose Bedia and all the other Cuban works of Art I have accumulated---even the stunning self-portrait (with pearls) by Rene Pena.

Yes, I want to sell it all even my 5000 square foot house on five wonderful pinon, chamisa and juniper acres with views of three mountain ranges.

But NOT my soul---my soul is not for sale.

And I want to keep my self-respect when I sell my possessions---when I sell all my furniture, including: antique desks and chairs; a funky mesquite table; an old English tavern table; lamps; beds, overstuffed couches and chairs...And I want to sell the stone and metal garden benches that several artists made for me...Oh, but I won't sell the old chest with the inlaid wood, spelling out the name of my great, great grandmother. That I'll give to my daughter, the family historian. But I will sell all the Burmese art: paintings, puppets, sculpture, photographs, books...

Oh, BOOKS! I will sell all my books, including my well-loved set of the O.E.D. and all my ART books--even the ones signed and inscribed. And I will leave the various notes and cards and articles that I wanted to save (for long forgotten reasons) inside the pages. Oh, and the poetry and philosophy books and my strange collection of books on topics that, at one time, intrigued me: Patagonia (I'll include the framed maps and rare prints); Scotland (especially books on Picts and Celtic myths); mountain climbing books. There was a time when I could hardly concentrate on anything but dangerous climbing, adventure and lost-in-the-wilderness subjects. I'll sell the bird books and the word books and all the political books...I think I'll select twenty of my favorite books and I'll put them in a box until I can return for them...because I want to travel long and lightly...long and lightly.

Yes, I will sell evething: china; silver; jewelry; dolls; my Wonder Woman collection. Oh, I might hold on to the special Wonder Woman figure that Carol Sarkisian made. And I don't think I could bring myself to sell the little sculpture that Erika Wanenmacher made of me--all silver with orange wire hair and a chest that opens and exposes a big red heart...And I'll keep one or two Eugene Newmann paintings and a few John Connell works on paper but I'll sell the Tasha Ostranders and the Allan Grahams and the painting of the mass graves in Iraq that I acquired in Baghdad and I'll sell the Haitian items. I'll keep the framed letter of recommendation to college that Oscar Hammerstein wrote about me and somehow I'll hold on to the boxes and boxes of letters and photographs that document the decades of my wonder-filled life. Some day I'll sort through it all. Not now, though, not now.

I will definitely sell the televisions and miscellaneous electronics including my excellent CD player and all my CDs. I'll sell everything I've mentioned and all the small things I haven't mentioned...

And I will honor my debts and take what money remains and...I will wander and explore and encounter and celebrate and wonder...

"How is it that all that happened happened or didn't happen and how did it all dissolve or solidify and become condensed into this wonderful NOW that leads inexplicably to all the next nows that I yearn to encounter...Now, how do I begin!??

World Wide Women of Wisdom

2011-04-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

An Idea! This is a call to women everywhere to join World Wide Women of Wisdom: WWWW. Yes gentlemen, this call is just for women. Nevertheless, you are most welcome to read to the end and (perhaps) pass this information on to the wonderful women in your lives... NOTE: I decided to limit membership in this loose-to-the-point-of-frayed organization to women because I think this idea (see below) needs to be associated with a BIG group and it has to exist to help that big group...Moreover, in my experience, women are both powerful and hard-wired to help and comfort others and at the same time I know that so many women are in need of help in so many ways... SO: I have this idea...and I have imagined it working. Although it (definitely) makes sense to me, it doesn't necessarily make sense in the world outside of my imagination. That's because my imagination springs from the (frequently fuzzy) mind of a poet/artist who has been masquerading as a Gallery owner for decades! As I unfold (or un-crumple) this idea... [I wish I had an image of one of those environmentally more correct spirally light non-bulbs to illustrate the idea. But I don't.] ...please try to imagine it in a positive way. I ask that because I think it would be pretty easy to dismiss it as something that simply (?) could not happen; something that could not work. This "idea" began as a wondering exercise. I state here that I am a compulsive wonderer...I believe there is power or potential power in a good bout of free-floating wondering. Sometimes, at least. So, I was wondering not too long ago how one might create an organization (loose and leaderless) that all women could join, that all women could embrace. I considered that the organization couldn't cost much to join. I decided to make the membership fee one dollar. I further determined that the core idea should be easily understood and run by anyone, anywhere...and that it would have as its goal helping women in any way in which it was deemed helpful by the various women who participated. Okay...It's like this. To join: one takes a single dollar bill, writes "wwww" on it, initials it and tears off one small corner of the bill--on which one has also written "wwww". The small corner is put in one's wallet where one's identification is kept. It could be affixed to a business card or secured in the compartment where a driver's license is kept or just saved somewhere. This is one's proof of membership! The slightly (very slightly) "defaced" one dollar bill is collected by a volunteer member--anyone can be a volunteer member! When a significant amount of dollars has been collected ($50 or $100) the bundle would be tied with a pink ribbon and given (by the collector/volunteer)to any woman in need. I picture a woman struggling with little kids in a shopping mall in a distressed community...or coming out of a social services office...or sitting in an emergency room...or standing in line at an unemployment office...on sitting alone at bus stop...or wandering on a lonely street... In my fantasy, I envision millions of women participating. I imagine every woman who knew about the project would find one dollar and only one dollar (there are no tiers of membership) to become a participant in the World Wide Women of Wisdom. Anyone can be a Donor or a Collector or a Gifter or a Receiver...Soon there would be those generous (wwww) dollars floating through all communities---reminding people of...well, of the love and compassion and generosity of all women towards all women. If you like the idea, please collect membership dollars from your friends. Make sure they keep their tiny membership corner. Tell your friends to become members or collectors and let's make small but positive differences in the lives of our sisters---regardless of their ages, sexual orientation, religious beliefs (or non-beliefs) political persuasions... WORLD WIDE WOMEN of WISDOM Oh...and, if you're so inclined drop me a facebook message or e-mail (lindalavega@aol.com) to let me know that you're on board! Thank you!

Universe To Linda: Come In Linda!

2011-04-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

The Universe seems to be telling me that I am headed for a whole new way of living! At first, I didn't believe it. Although I closed the Gallery after 33 years, I saw myself continuing to be "Linda Durham Girl Art Dealer"---just in a new way. No way! I thought the closing of the public space would allow me to deal more seriously with Artists and Clients---but that's not the way the Universe saw things. Evidently! Because here I am: a little more than a month after the announcement that the Gallery was closing and a week back from a quick trip to Myanmar--where I meditated and wrote and prayed and hoped for a smooth transition from my "public personae" into "Linda Durham Private Dealer and Consultant"...However...The Universe seems to be making other plans for me. Now, I do not mean to be vague about what's going on...I guess I just needed a few sentences to get me in the mood (to give me the courage) to write what's what. What's What: I ran out of money. I ran out of enthusiasm for the Art Game. I ran out of credit. I ran out of time. I ran out of optimism that things would soon turn around and everything would be roses and clover by summer. And, I realized that I have had a gambler-like addiction to the Art World: one more excellent show; one big sale; one good Art Fair...maybe, maybe...I think I can...make enough money to float this boat of hope! I ran out of reasons and excuses... I ran out of my Life! Before I went to Myanmar (where my low level depression could hide and soften under the sun--among some of my treasured friends and pagodas) I initiated or accepted some private dealer/consultant projects--interesting projects that would be fun and profitable. I returned home eager to get them underway. But Wait...This is a case of "the best laid plans of mice and (wo)men..." Everything fell apart, got postponed, canceled or suddenly (!) was of no interest to me! Now what, I wondered?! I have lots of debt, no money, no prospects, an expensive house filled with books and art and other treasures...and I would trade it all for...for...for what? Freedom? Purpose? And then...my old fantasy/threat loomed her wile-y head! I have freedom. I have purpose. I must use those qualities to create this next segment of my rich life. How? I asked myself! And The Universe and I decided to lighten my footprint, to acknowledge that I am no longer about things or style or fashion or fame or winning. I am about BEING. So, in the middle of this reluctant acknowledgement, I turn on the computer to check my e-mails...and there, in the middle of a near plethora of messages, is one from the Application Committee for the US BOAT to GAZA. I have been selected to be on board The Audacity of Hope, part of the International Peace and Humanitarian Flotilla. The Flotilla will sail in late May! And my path unfolds before me...And I am finding the courage to let everything go...I will sell and or give away all that I own. And I will make certain that this next Big, Remarkable Chapter of my Life will be the best, the most profound and most profoundly important part of this long---but not nearly long enough life of mine! If the consultancy jobs had not been dropped, I would have to have said no to the opportunity to be on board with a group of people who put their lives on the line in the name of peace and freedom. I am one of those people!! Awww...some days it is all so thorny, knotty and imponderable and sometimes the Universe says, "Here, Linda, take this opportunity and fly!!! Or, SAIL!!

Re-printed Holiday Letter

2010-12-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

For days I have been wondering just what to say in a general letter that I usually feel compelled to write during this ho-ho-holiday season…I almost decided not to write anything! That’s an indication of how much has been on my mind—not, as you may have thought, how little.
I don’t want to say the same thing that everyone says…You know: “We wish you…” blah, blah and “Happy …” this or that…I want to find a way to say something meaningful and authentic…something worth remembering.
So far, I haven’t found the words. Well, I have some of the words…I just haven’t found a way to put them into sensible sentences. Perhaps I’ll just list some of the words: transformative; discretionary; liminal; syncronous; captivating; billions; luminous; creation; limitlessness; abracadabra; friendship; peace…
Maybe that’s enough to say!
I opened some Christmas cards earlier today. They’re not like the cards of yesteryear that I remember with a certain amount of nostalgia. They’re not those jolly cards that arrive in handwritten envelopes, from neighbors and friends and Aunts and Uncles…No. Today, most holiday greeting cards arrive with printed labels, addressed by a machine. And they are (virtually) all from businesses: The bank; my insurance company (and of course they want me to have a safe and prosperous year!); the pet store where I’ve been buying over-priced gourmet cat and dog food; the dry cleaners; the clothing store… Now I’m getting those annoying e-cards where one is obliged (almost) to copy and paste and click and go to a far off site and listen to a cartoon character sing something silly. Then, there are the heart-wrenching greetings asking for money…This is our world today.
I wish you were ALL coming to the Gallery today (or soon). I wish you were calling and writing---looking for Art to grace your home or the home of a loved one. But, I’m realistic. Probably you’re not. In fact, chances are that most of you have not read this far…
For those of you who are still reading, I want to share a feeling that has been churning in me for most of the past year: COMPASSION. My wish for everyone is that we make time to Pay Attention to the Beauty in the World. I think it’s important to be loving towards all whom we encounter---family, friends and strangers alike. We need one another. We need optimism, kindness, forgiveness, cheerfulness, and…
Love,
Linda

2010-12-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

In The Answers Are The Questions!
In The Solutions Are The Problems!

Back in the 80’s, when interest rates on bank loans were sky high, I recall a dark period in the dim early life of my Gallery. I recall spending night after sleepless night and day after stress-filled day searching for ways to pay off a two hundred thousand dollar loan that was (fast) coming due. It was a most uncomfortable time for my fledgling business and for me! I was a foolish young woman intent on the pursuit of “a highly improbable fantasy”--or so I was told by many a would-be expert. Yes, I risked expensive money on a dream that was not based on super sound financial thinking. And yes, I was a naïve, cockeyed optimist---willing to live with whatever consequences came my way. Daily, I chased wild fears from my thoughts. Nightly I counted them like so many sheep: abject failure, humiliation, banishment, bankruptcy, public embarrassment, disappointed children, loss of friends, debtors’ prison…
During one of those dark days (and there were many), my friend Deirdre, a single mother raising two small boys alone, called me in a panic. She was completely and utterly distraught because she owed five hundred dollars and she didn’t have it and she didn’t know how to get it…I tried to comfort her with my much larger tale of woe—to no avail, I’m sure.
That night I spoke to a successful businessman, a savvy mentor of mine. I told him about my friend who was worried about her measly five hundred dollar debt. I made light of it---comparing it to the far more serious situation of my frighteningly significant two hundred thousand dollar debt. The businessman looked at me with a knowing smile. After a long pause, he confessed that he owed two and a half million dollars and he didn’t know where to find it. He needed it by the end of the following week!
And…then I got it!
It’s all relative! The nervousness, the sleepless nights, the fears, the impending embarrassment…it is all the same. If a young single mother owes five hundred dollars and can’t pay it, it’s no less disturbing to her than owing two hundred thousand dollars is to a struggling, inexperienced entrepreneur who doesn’t have it and doesn’t know how to find it. Moreover, the mature investor, caught in a two point five million dollar money bind, is surely not experiencing any greater anxiety than the aforementioned.
It’s all relative!
But not particularly comforting!

This, I think, is how it is now---now, in the weirdness that is our current economic reality:
Banks aren’t lending. Workers are struggling. Small businesses are in trouble. Newspapers are folding. (no pun intended) Restaurants are closing. Automobile plants are shutting down. Investment firms are laying off workers. Real estate is soft. Rich people aren’t buying art.
Where is the money? Where did it go? When will it come back? Will any of it come my way? How will I keep my commitments? How will you keep yours? Who (or what) is in charge? What can I do to alleviate my own quiet anxiety? Can I (possibly) assuage the anxiety (I see it on the faces, I hear it in the voices) of the people I meet? What would make me think I could? Why do I have so much? How can I lighten my footprint on the planet? Why are people mean? Who are the fear mongers? How can we disappear them? Why is my country still funding evil war machines? Is this what God intended? Maybe there is no God. How did it all begin? Where and when and how will it end?
And what’s all this about a “new paradigm”???

from MANIFESTING DESTINY

2010-10-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

When I was seventeen, I was musing on the future…imagining the next century: 2000. I thought it would be such an exciting moment in history. I imagined the giant celebration in Times Square…dancing, singing, parties, champagne…Then I calculated the age I would be when that exciting moment arrived. Fifty-seven! I plunged, momentarily, into a shallow well of despair. How absolutely depressing. I’d be an old woman…probably no one would want to celebrate with me. How lonely…
My vision (and accompanying imagined disappointments) of the new millennium didn’t actually materialize. It turned out that I had plenty of friends and I didn’t think for an instant that I was an old woman. None of us paid much attention to the moment the clocks and chimes and fireworks announced that it was 2000. I think a few of us got together, shared a great meal, drank some champagne and continued our lives…
Our lives. My life! Now, it’s more than fifty years since my seventeen year old self expressed dismay and distaste at aging---or rather at aging past the early 20’s…
I remember those 20’s…and the summer and other seasons of LOVE. I remember the slogan: “Don’t trust anyone over thirty!” My generation spouted that warning. However, as soon as a few of us turned thirty, the slogan disappeared. And we continued our lives…Me? I tried to do everything…I was so in love with life…with possibilities, ideas, challenges, places, accomplishments, things, people…myself…
Somewhere…in my 30’s, I recall reading a disturbing newspaper article about a sixty year old woman who was raped! Disgusting! Yes, I knew that rape was an act of anger and aggression…but…on a sixty year old woman! That was sick. I remembered that at age sixty. It was a quietly painful, poignant thing to remember.
I guess I’m old---as far as most people on this planet of youth would believe. Old. I can’t “wrap my head around the fact”---although the fact that I just said “wrap my head around…” indicates that I do not come from the world of the young…or of the middle aged.
Now, in order to find comfort with the very real fact that time moves--and in my case has moved quite far, I imagine being eighty-five. Now that’s old!
I even invented a private process to privately comfort myself about being sixty-seven. Okay…I close my eyes…I’m in the privacy of my boudoir…I get very still. Very relaxed and quiet. And then I imagine that I am eighty-five. I experience my eighty-five year old body. I can still walk okay but with a bit less bounce. I’m wearing practical shoes. I have some sort of ace bandage on one of my knees. There is prune juice in my refrigerator. With my eyes still closed, I survey the wrinkles and blotches on my skin…I notice that I keep several pairs of glasses at different spots around my house. I called my granddaughter by my daughter’s name. I no longer wanted to travel alone to exotic countries…
And then, from that eighty-five year old consciousness, I took a personal trip down memory lane…and I remembered being sixty-seven…and I smiled at the foolishness of that whippersnapper to think she was old when she was only sixty-seven. And I mused some more from that eighty-five year old place…”If I only knew then (at 67) what I know now.” And then…pause, pause…I open my actual eyes and celebrate the fact that I do know now what a less curious 67 year old might fail to know about the importance and opportunities and life that is around me, before me…And I celebrate the power of good strong rationalization. Because, why not? What is the alternative?!

Myitkyina: Way North of Mandalay

2010-10-20T17:52:00.000-07:00

I am in a so-called first class car in a funky, rattle-y train, chugging north out of Mandalay on my way to spend a week in Myitkyina in the state of Kachin in northern Myanmar.
I’m sitting in a single, hard seat with a small table, facing a man in a similar seat.
I’m facing forward, at least. I don’t like riding backwards on a forward moving vehicle.
It’s night. I can’t see, what must be beautiful scenery outside the window. However, I can see the beautiful life in the train car. I can see the family with small children playing quiet games across the aisle. The aisles are filled, filled with boxes and bundles and small trunks. An old man is stretched out on some of the boxes…a colorful textile covers him.
Two refined women sit talking and sewing and eating food. One of them offers me an orange. “Thank you, I say…”Chay-su-tim-bah deh”
Someone coughs, someone snores, someone whispers, someone laughs…Every now and then an orange robed wizened Monk passes through our compartment. We make donations. He asks me, “Hallew, Where you fron?” “United States” Oh veddy good, America…” He smiles. His face crinkles with joy. He tells the other passengers. More faces smile at me.
I am the only foreigner in the train car and I am in my element---“out of context.” I am a fellow traveler—in so many meanings of the phrase. I am on my way to rendezvous with my Burmese “Sister Friend” and her husband. We will be staying at the home of her
Boarding school roommate from long ago. It is the week of Kachin State Day and there is to be a big festival. I am excited and curious…
Several very hip, western-dressed Kachin teenage girls meet me at the station. They have returned for the festivities from their various schools and jobs in other parts of the country and abroad. Hundreds of Kachin people are returning to Myitkyina from their jobs and homes in Thailand, China, India, Korea to participate in the big 60 year anniversary Manau. A Manau is a sacred festival composed of animal sacrifices, dancing, singing, drinking…I’m up for it all.
The teenagers lead me to a big comfortable SUV. We pile in and are driven to the home of my hostess. It’s a large compound composed of three buildings: a mansion; a sleeping house and a cooking/eating house. I meet my friends U Tin Win and his wife Sanda (my sister-friend) and I am introduced to the Matron of the House, a truly regal woman. She is dressed in a shimmering longyi, a royal blue silk blouse and a golden brocade shawl. She is richly bejeweled with rubies and diamonds and gold and emeralds everywhere that one could bedeck oneself in jewels. Her smile is warm. She embraces me. We have no common language---beyond my few Burmese sentences. Her first language is Kachin. Through Sanda, our girlfriend-in-common, I am urged to get ready…we are going to Chetch. I quickly change from my train attire into a plain longyi and simple top. I don’t know where Chetch is or how far away or what we will be doing there but I am prepared to be astonished. The whole household is alive with preparations for the trip to Chetch. But wait…we’re not getting in cars…We’re walking…All the way to Chetch!?
In a minute, I realize that we’re going to church. Myitkyina is a Christian city---as is most of Kachin State. It is the Kachin New Year’s Day---something I had not read in my guide book. Because the church would not be big enough for everyone on this special day, a giant tent has been erected. It’s quite wonderful. There are hundreds and hundreds of people gathering. Everyone is friendly and I am introduced again and again. I am sitting on the second row with some relatives of my hostess who is on the first row. People practically bow to her. I am given a Kachin/English prayer book and hymnal and I can follow along because the Kachin people use our alphabet---not the mysterious and beautiful circles and curves that make up the Burmese alphabet.
The whole small city is a celebration.
This first night there is a musical stage presentation with act after act after act. Each new performer is presented with multiple bouquets of flowers. There is food and more food. The large pavilion is hung with scores of wonderful paintings. There is an abundance of local rice wine. Each of the four or five nights of the Manau there is a banquet honoring the food and culture of one of the neighboring countries where many Kachin now live: China, Thailand, India…and more entertainment. It’s remarkable. In Myitkyina, it seems that everyone can sing. And every night my hostess is in a more beautiful ensemble---always with rubies and other jewels.
And every day, everywhere we go, I am asked if I will be dancing at the Manau. Well, yes. I love to dance.
The day of the dance my two sister friends and some other women dress me. I’m wearing a Kachin tribe longyi, a black velvet jacket covered with real silver discs and small bangles. I have a woven belt and my head is wrapped in a special woven scarf. The women wind and re-wind the scarf until it is just right. They put some make-up on me. Throughout the compound there is the excitement of preparing for the dance.

…We arrive at the pavilion. It’s as big as a football field. The surrounding area is filled with people in native costumes: distinctive colors and patterns, specific head dresses. Now…I think there will be music and we will all dance in our own dance styles. Nooooo.
It’s like this: there is—in the middle of the vast dance pavilion---a cluster of big drums, BIG drums…and in a single line, upwards of a thousand people snake around, following a leader with a giant head dress.. There is a specific step and a specific way to move your arms and everyone holds something in their hands. The women in our clan are holding fans…and we follow with our certain step and with our arms moving in a certain hypnotic, rhythmic motion; pah, pah, pah, pah…thousands…and the way the line snakes, one is always passing someone going in the opposite direction…new faces, new costumes, new smiles…pah, pah pah, pah…and I am the only non-Kachin dancing. On the sidelines are some travel photographers and a few western-looking spectators…But I am a Kachin, pah,pah,pah, pah…and I am dancing…and I am so perfectly happy and the drums are inside of me and I am holding my fans and moving in just the right way, and I am following, following the friendly Kachin woman in front of me, in step—out of context--smiling…and there is nothing but wonder and goodness and community…there is no war, no poverty, no evil whatsoever…there are no boundaries, there are no strangers, no worries, no sadness, no loneliness…only the drums and the smiles…and I am safe and at peace with the world…

An Open Letter to Art Lovers and Collectors with Money

2010-10-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

I miss you! You used to come to the Gallery with “acquiring minds”…
You used to tell me about your walls and sculpture gardens and office suites.
You would call the Gallery, in advance of your arrival in Santa Fe, to tell me that you were eager to find a new painting for your dining room…or a second piece by an artist whose work you purchased the year before that continued to thrill you…or a drawing for your daughter’s birthday…or a sculpture for the atrium in your new corporate headquarters…
You haven’t been in contact for a while. I want you to know that the Gallery is still here. We still mount beautiful exhibitions by many exceptional emerging and mid-career artists. We have some astonishing, innovative paintings, photographs, sculptures by deeply serious artists. There are even “blue chip” works for you to consider for that spot in the library…or the guest room…or the beach house…
You must be tired of discussing these strange economic times of ours. You must crave opportunities to find some sort of respite from the news that serves mainly to anger, annoy, confuse and scare…Surely it’s time to step away from the anxiety that arises from too much concern for the negative “what ifs” that bombard us every day and time to move towards the peaceful and provocative intentions of splendid works of ART that have within them the ability to give beauty and meaning to our daily lives.
Come back. We’re waiting for you, prepared for you. Let’s restore the symbiotic relationship we had with one another. Let’s celebrate the healing possibilities that can be found in the wonderful world of Art. Let’s keep Artists afloat while we turn our attention to the many possibilities for success, inspiration and satisfaction that accrue to those who put the creative aspects of our society in places of importance---where they belong!!

In response to EXILED (The New Yorker)

2010-10-18T14:02:00.000-07:00

The photograph of Ashin Issariya (18 October 2010) is beautiful, powerful. Yet, the tone of the short column by Mr. Packer, a writer whom I have long admired, concerns me and prompts this letter. I believe his words play into a failed and failing government policy and serve mainly to exacerbate the serious situation faced by the remarkable people of Myanmar while presenting a one-sided picture of the troublesome situation in that country. Myanmar. The name of the country is no longer Burma. Only a few countries continue to call it that---perhaps in the mistaken belief that to call it Myanmar would suggest that one is not in support of the struggling National League for Democracy nor of its world famous leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. But of course, we are.
The policy of the United States towards Myanmar/Burma is perplexing to this “freelance cultural explorer” who has visited the country numerous times.
Do we truly believe that the imposed sanctions and boycotts have done anything to promote peace, improve prosperity or broaden understanding between our two imperfect countries? Is there a blackout on any news that shows the slightest non-negative light on the actions and policy of the current (unpopular, xenophobic, greedy) regime? It has barely been reported that the Myanmar government, in cooperation with various wildlife organizations, recently created the largest Tiger Reserve in the world—an area the size of Vermont? This is a very good thing.
If, as Mr. Packer reports, “The country’s real leaders remain in prison, in hiding, in exile, under wraps, waiting for their chance.” I ask, is our unrelenting insistence on demonizing every aspect of the current government a way in which we intend to move those disenfranchised/exiled individuals closer to leadership roles in their country?
In the past few years, the United States has built a state-of-the-art Embassy in Yangon (old name Rangoon). Yet we have no Ambassador in place there. There have been small positive moves on the part of the regime to soften some of their past stances. These have been met with skepticism, derision or silence by most of the west. What possible progress towards a more democratic system might we expect by steadfastly condemning the upcoming election as “a sham”? Is anyone in our State Department working to support a more open election?
Political change is possible in Myanmar. It cannot happen over night. Perhaps with a bit of support and a degree of optimism a dangerous, failed state situation in that beleaguered part of our world could be avoided.
Every day, the Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Thais and certain multi-national corporations are extracting and exporting the rich resources of that country: natural gas, timber, rubies, produce, art…and all the while we hold fast to a policy that isn’t working satisfactorily for any Party.
I lament the lack of knowledge and the ongoing misinformation that dominates our thinking about Myanmar. Still, I hold a belief that a new policy is possible and would be greatly beneficial.

Linda Durham (lindalavega@aol.com)
28 Arroyo Calabasas
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87506
505 466 4001/ 466 6600

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO MY DREAMS AND GOALS

2010-10-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one who reads these blogs of mine? I think so.
So, that allows me to write freely, candidly---as if I were writing in a private diary; a delicate diary with a fine leather clasp and a tiny golden key. Tonight I do not plan to write much...I am simply planning to begin to write more regularly, more intimately, more interestingly than I have been writing here--or not been writing here for lo these many moons. It's definitely not that I haven't been writing or thinking about writing. I write every day. I just had fallen away from writing on this site. Frankly, minutes ago, when I found the password to this secret blog---a password that I had misplaced half way through 2009---I was surprised to discover that the entire blog had not been purged! Amazing! It was all still there...all these (see below) wildly random ramblings of mine, all neatly (and mainly accurately) typed in a non-descript format on a black, black background.

Having found my way here and having re-read these old posts--posts that anyone can read who happens to wander into this obscure (extremely obscure) corner of cyberspace, I am deciding, even as I work on finding my way to the end of this sentence, to write every few days...starting with this day. I must say that the old posts mystified me. Did I write all that? Really? It all seems so new and yet so true! If I weren't loathe to boast, I might even give a couple of those posts fairly high grades.
Onward!
I pledge (feel free to hold me accountable) to write often and soon (and here; aqui) about: war, art, emotions, politics, beauty, travel, courage, failure and any topic that any of you phantom readers might deign to suggest...I say that in relative safety...feeling marginally confident that no one will suggest...I'm tempted to end with a quiet "tee hee" but I will--instead--continue towards another point...a point a tad more thoughtful and mature: Herewith begins my sincere intention to write and post to you, oh lovely ghosts, some snippets from this long-time, wandering, wondering, figuring-it-out mind of mine.
More soon!

On the 4th (Farce) of July

2009-07-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

Independence Day. Really? When can we change the name of this holiday to Interdependence Day?

I have no definite plans until five o'clock when I will drive to the edge of the county to spend a few hours with some remarkable friends of mine. We won't be roasting hotdogs. We won't be singing "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." We won't be waiting for the fireworks at first dark---unless, as my friend K. said, "It's conversational fireworks." We will be sharing ideas and opinions about world politics...because these friends are my very savvy and articulate experts on many aspects of politics and on the realities that accompany the confounding and disappointing political movements of our world---our interdependent world.

Meanwhile, I am organizing my mind to beat in rhythm with my heart so that I can articulate the throbs and aches that give meaning to this life of mine. I am struggling to "hearticulate" these things!

The Gallery is closed this Saturday--4th of July--so my young staff can go to parades and pancake breakfasts on the Plaza and prepare family picnics and outings to see the displays of fireworks. I don't like displays of fireworks. So there, I've said it!

I have stayed at home all day--alone, naturally--doing stay at home-type things: re-hanging some artwork; finishing a couple of books that have been on my night table for far too long; doctoring my forlorn geraniums; watching a bit of tennis...and thinking.

What has happened to The good old United States of America? How did it become a country of frightened and greedy and somnabulent people who feel no connection to most of the people they encounter on the aforementioned picnics, parades and other community events? Why do so many judge and condemn and dismiss those who are different on the outside (skin, age, dress, accent, choice of mates)?

I plan to explore these personal posings for the remainder of the month...or so I'm telling myself right now!

We are interdependent, you know. I'm not making that up just because it offers a bit of semi-clever wordplay for the day.

Confusion/Confucius

2009-05-20T18:14:00.001-07:00

"When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them."

...Confucius (and/or one of his followers) said or wrote that!

In a mood of confusion, while searching for a mite of comfort in the words of any ancient philosopher, I chose to peruse The Chinese Classics---thinking that (perhaps) Confucius could extricate me from the discomfiting mental space into which I had plummeted earlier in the day.

I must have been word-marrying "confusion" with Confucius.

The quote that stood out, as I skimmed the page, is the one you see above. A mistake. It caused a continuation of my plummeting state of mind. Confusion is now coupled with contrition. Oh, yes! I have faults. And I am fearful of abandoning them! Without my faults, I fear, I would be bereft of enough je ne sais quoi to sustain my myriad tasks, my commitments, my follies, my veritable Life's purpose!

Confucius say: "...do not fear to abandon..."

Confusion say: Should I stay or should I go?

Later in the evening, I found some useful quotes by Chuang-tzu (369-286 B.C.) whom I had never read before. He is said to have said (or written): "All [wo]men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility." Great that he could rhyme so cleverly in English lo! those many years B.C.

Confusion say: Utility, futility, ability, humility, shumility...

It seems to me...that through all these years of working for and playing with and learning from THE ARTS, I have neither fully grasped nor completely conquered that which would eliminate the recurring futility of my ability to marry humility with utility. Hence: Shumility!

But seriously, Folks!

I lament the fact that the arts (especially the best contemporary painting, sculpture and photography) have such a difficult time finding respectful places in the lives of most people in this vast country of ours...I'm keeping this lamentation confined to the situation in this country--it could be a world wide lament. Quien sabe!?

I'm looking for a solution...some sort of action that would catapult the Art World to a place of prominence on our national list of priorities...

Got any ideas???

LOVING ART

2009-05-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

Loving, in this case, is not an adjective. It's a gerund. As in: I am loving Art.

Sometimes I find it almost painful to love great art---serious, brilliantly conceived, divinely inspired, well-crafted, personal art. It's painful because it doesn't fit inside my hungry being. It's too big. It stretches my consciousness to the bursting point. It spills out and slips away from my most earnest efforts to contain it. I guess I must accept the fact that really good art can't be completely contained. That is an awesome fact! Sometimes looking at masterpieces makes me dizzy. I have to close my eyes before them and take a breath and struggle to absorb them; to be absorbed by them. Sometimes, when I am standing before a true work of art, I start to weep inside and tears appear in the corners of my eyes. It doesn't happen all the time. It doesn't even happen frequently. But when it happens, I am forever changed.

I am remembering a small Annunciation work by Leonardo DaVinci that hangs in a dim corner of a small room in The Uffizi in Florence...
And now my thoughts leap to a tearful reunion I had with one of Rodin's Burghers of Calais in a stairwell at the Chicago Art Institute...
My memory bombards me with Art for which I harbor respect and awe...my mind's screen flashes quick images of works by Ribera, Cezanne, Gorky, Guston, Hopper, Diebenkorn, Martin...I celebrate the enormity of the possibilities great art has to elevate the spirit, to inspire, to heal...

...oh, I'm beginning to wax a bit too poetic, too mega-dramatic, methinks.

My plan, this morning, was to write about a current personal experience of awe...but I seem to have gotten self-conscious---even here in the privacy of my sun-filled writing room. So, without intending to, I retreated into the relative safety of past masters! I became self-conscious because what I want to say is difficult to say without the words sounding like hollow Gallery Owner-ese. And these feelings/thoughts are too important to me to risk sounding like a commericial gallery owner writing self-serving business-type hype.

I know/believe that the show opening tomorrow at Linda Durham Contemporary Art is... Remarkable. Rare. World-worthy. Amazing. Brilliant.

It's been a long sleepy winter at the Gallery. The months-long, rotating show of works from our Inventory offered the relatively few January-to-May gallery visitors a fine look at the strength and beauty of the work we represent. It was what it was! It was what we do in the "off season." The weather was tough. The financial world was in deep disarray. The town was quiet. I spent most of those months wondering what in the world would happen to the Art World---given the perilous political/economic times that we all faced---and still face. I had some gloomy thoughts that I worked hard to keep at bay. But gloom sometimes had its way with me. And so, in a gesture towards optimism, I catapulted my hopes forward to May when our so-called season would begin. I survived my harnessed fears of doom. They disappeared...completely...yesterday! Poof! Whoosh!

Thank you Erika Wanenmacher and Lucy Maki!

All day Thursday, I wandered around the Gallery, in a state of semi-bliss, looking and (re-looking) at two rooms full of MASTERFUL paintings by Lucy Maki and observing the progress of Erika Wanenmacher's REMARKABLE "Ditch Witch" installation...I couldn't stop smiling. Two exhibitions, opening on Saturday. Two excellent exhibitions worthy of International praise and respect. The more I reveled in the beauty, power, originality and integrity of these two bodies of work, the more I realized and embraced a treasured facet of the Art Business, my Art Business:

What makes me most happy, most satisfied and proud about having a gallery is (surprisingly?) not those moments of financial success. No, it's excellence. Excellence! It's the privilege of participating, in a small way, with the extraordinary art of my time and community. It's about introducing the Art World to the work of brilliant, passionate artists. It's about mounting and presenting that work to a curious, inspiration-seeking public. It about being astonished and then...having the opportunity to astonish others!

Don't miss this ASTONISHING show!
Walk, run, ride your bike, skip, drive, fly to Santa Fe.

Lucy Maki's Architectonics
Erika Wanenmacher's Ditch Witch

Wondering Woman

2009-05-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

That's it: Wondering Woman!
That's my secret code name for myself. I've been searching for a proper secret code name for a very long time. For years I have been deceiving myself, flattering myself by thinking (hoping) that the powerful moniker "Wonder Woman" suited me. I know, I know, Linda What's-Her-Name really owns the title...and before that there were the comic books...and before that there were (surely) countless wonder women wandering anonymously around the world--wondering. Identifying with the Wonder Woman character has long been a way for me to entertain myself, a way to boost my wildly vascillating sense of self worth...It amounted to nothing more than a chronic case of wishful wondering.

(note to readers: sometimes a perverse penchant for accidental alliteration overtakes my marginally more measured means of word selection--my apology)

Onward!

Why, I wonder, have I collected so many random, kitschy Wonder Woman items: magnets; a jelly glass; note paper; dolls; books...The piece de resistance---because, when I saw it I couldn't resist it---is a Carol Sarkisian Wonder Woman doll, with a gold-leafed body, bejeweled in ersatz rubies and diamonds, standing stalwartly on a snowy peak, in a glass and powder-coated metal diarama--fantastic!

And now to answer my own question:

I collected (accumulated is the better word here) all those odds and ends of "wonderwomaniana" because...well...pretty much just because! The book bag, the lunch box...they simply appeared (as gifts and from wanderings in flea markets and second hand shops) and I simply found a place for them in my life--on shelves, in drawers, on my refrigerator...

In an attempt to find clarity, through pondering possible answers to a loose variation of the chicken and egg puzzle, I posit that first there was the wonder and then there was the wonder woman and then there was the wondering...Or was the wondering first?

This started out to be a personal celebration of the wondrousness of the act of wondering. It was meant to be serious. Profound, perhaps. Now, I see that it has morphed into an unintentionally (and embarrassingly) exposed view of a not infrequently frequented part of my mind---the part that gives me no peace of mind. May I add that it's late, late at night!

I'm wondering (I can't help it) how chains of thought are linked...There is a drinking/parlor game that, from time to time, I've played with others---but that I play most often with myself--when I am caught without people or books. It goes like this: think of a common two word phrase...take the second word of the phrase and make a new two word phrase starting with the aforementioned second word...and so on...like this:

table top---top hat---hat trick---trick pony---pony tail---tail end---end paper---paper trail---trail dust---dust bin---bin Laden...

Oooops!
Now what, I wonder!?

Brother, can you spare a smile?!

2009-04-22T06:08:00.000-07:00

Today my thoughts center around problem-solving---make that "puzzle"-solving. The word "puzzle" is much more optimistic. It implies a definite solution. The word "problem" does not. So, I'm wondering (I seem to wonder again and again) about possible solutions to the multitude of troubles facing our endangered WORLD. On this beautiful Earth Day morning, having saluted lovely Venus and the exquisite sliver of moon--a glorious gift to the early risers who looked to the East--I am searching for a clear and righteous question. I'm searching for a question to pose to myself and the Universe...the kind of question that will lead to the kind of answer that will lead us to the kinds of beauty, safety, happiness and opportunities that we ALL seek. I think we all do seek our own kinds of beauty, safety, happiness and opportunities.

I'm envisioning a growing, world-wide acknowledgement of the strength and fragility of our planet. "Envisioning" works better (for me) than praying. When I envision, I can "actually" see; when I pray, I can only hope!

Everything about our global community seems both fragile and strong these days---environmentally, socially, politically, spiritually, emotionally. Some people look at what's working, what is fixed or (relatively) pure and say things like "it's all okay...don't worry...no problem." Other members of this World of ours point to the terrible poverty, wars, pollution and ignorance that threaten our health, livelihood and Peace...and they weep or tear their hair or rant or cry out about our threatened wilderness, our unhealthy children, our homeless, hungry...

In this country, these days, I sense so much isolation---between us, among us, within us. How is it that so many "citizens" who live somewhere between "the redwood forests" and "the gulf stream waters" fail to find pride in this country! What has befallen the people of these United States to cause us to thwart the many opportunities to join with others to celebrate what's right about America and Americans and to work to fix what is wrong about this country of countless possibilities?

My question is: Given that I believe that power, opportunity and solutions can be found in those places where opposites meet (friend/foe; right/left, light/dark, big/small, strong/weak...) how can I (and how can we and how can the World) meet the important issues of our time on those lines in order to solve the issues that threaten the life, liberty and happiness of ALL?

Naivete is one of my strengths. It seems to me that when one is too naive to believe that something can't be done, one just might envision it being done and one just might work to make a difference. A positive difference.

I read a poem (a jingle, actually) long ago. It stays with me to this day: "The World would stop if it were run by those who say 'it can't be done.'"

A few thoughts on Architecture

2009-04-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

Today I will participate in a distinguished panel on Architecture. I am the only non-architect on the panel. The most famous panelist is Ricardo Legoretta! It's the second time this panel has convened. The first time was to choose the recipient of the 2008 Jeff Harnar Award for excellence in Architecture (we did not award the award!!). Today we meet to talk about excellence in architecture in front of a few hundred interested (??) people. I wrote the following a few months ago...but thought it was time to share it.

THE HARNAR AWARD: It was with curiosity and a soupcon of trepidation that I drove up the driveway to Lori Harnar’s house, parked my car and found my way through the tunnel and up the winding staircase to the living quarters where the Jurors for the Harnar Award, as well as those who had organized the events and those who were facilitating, had gathered. It was not my first time in a Harnar house but it was my first time in Harnar’s house. It was remarkable! And yet, something bothered me. I was uncomfortable in the structure…It took a while to realize that the house was not designed for such a gathering…Oh, yes, everyone was accommodated---but in the process of accommodating them, the house was…and I use this word with hesitancy…abused. This house, in my opinion, was designed for Jeff and Lori. It is a highly personal expression. Far more than personal: it is a brilliant, sculptural object in which a private couple could dwell! A sanctuary. A respite from the outside world. The Harnar House is a thoughtfully conceived, creatively designed, masterfully sited and constructed personal monument to a set of ideals. No wonder Garrett Thornburg, who lives in a Harnar designed home, was moved to establish the Harnar Award for Excellence in Architecture in honor of Mr Harnar’s life and in celebration of his work. In 2007, a Jury Awarded the Harnar prize to Suby Bowden. Although I was not on the jury, I know the property and I know Ms. Bowden’s work. She was a most appropriate and most deserving recipient of the first Harnar Prize.

This year seven applicants presented their submissions for this award. After our first review of the material in the folders and the power point presentations, I had troubling thoughts. Where was the remarkable (and sexy) innovation that I experienced in the Harnar properties? Where was the superior design, the careful attention to site, the special use of materials? In short, where was the innovation?
I am not an architect. I am a Dealer of fine contemporary art. My life is about considering ideas, form, geometry, color, originality, execution, truth, beauty and the relationship of these elements with the whole. My responses are more intuitive than intellectual, more emotional than practical. With that caveat in place, I state that, from my vantage point, not one of the submissions came close to meeting the criteria for the Harnar Award. From first view of the seven submitted projects, I felt that no award should be given. To select the best of the uninspired would be to do a disservice to Harnar’s work and memory and to reduce significantly the honor that was given to last year’s honoree.

“Science works with chunks and bits and pieces of things with the continuity presumed, and (the artist) works only with the continuities of things with the chunks and bits and pieces presumed.”

---Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The connections between art and architecture---like the connections between aesthetics and ethics---are subtly present in all sorts of contrasts and comparisons. One can be found inside the other, or enfolding the other, or supporting or confounding the other. Architecture is the new glamour career, the new passion, fad and/or hobby. Everyone is an expert. Everyone has an opinion. Today the interested public is easily (all but blindly) lured or swayed by the hype that surrounds the creations of certain “famous” architects. Some architectural projects turn into sightseeing wonders---sometimes at the expense of their implied or original function. Some new museums eclipse or outshine the art in their collections. Some simply do a disservice to the collections by flaunting faux architectural genius above function. Not that form must always strictly follow function but shouldn’t it do more than merely pay lip service to it? But where is the dialogue? Where are the arbiters of taste or should there be no arbiters of taste.
Here in Santa Fe, architecture has been turned into a game: how many ways can adobes (and faux adobe walls) vigas, portals, copings, small windows, latillas, Mexican tiles…be designed/ assembled, re-designed/re-assembled to create an original look in the historic zone!

It seems that this current, all-consuming culture of ours, is embracing the idea of art and architecture more and more but ignoring the study of aesthetics and authenticity. We have lowered out standards of excellence. We “worship” the big and strange and famous and hyped at the expense of simple genius and elegance. Ersatz satisfies! There is not enough general education available or desired---education that would give people the tools to see rather than just look. We have become addicted to "syte bytes" rather than sites and sights. To consider excellence takes time. One must look at details. Not everything can be seen and appreciated in an instant.
We have the start of the slow food movement…now we need the slow observing movement.

To Wisconsin (an infinitive)

2009-04-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

Picture this, if you dare: It's late at night. I am in a small, meticulously appointed room in an over-the-top quaint Victorian bed and breakfast inn in Whitewater Wisconsin. I am the only guest and I have not seen the proprietors of the establishment for forty-eight hours. I have nothing to read but a week old Newsweek magazine...There is no television, no radio and I have a full-blown case of insomnia. Maddeningly, there is a gospel tune stuck in my head and I can't stop singing it: "Oh, Sisters let's go down, let's go down, don't ya wanna go down, oh, Sisters let's go down, down in the river to pray..."

I am tired. I have just finished two long (albeit rewarding and great) days lecturing in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater. I keep singing (ahhrghh) and reviewing the high points of those high point-filled days...My flight to Minneapolis--connecting to Albuquerque--leaves Milwaukee at 8:40 am. Milwaukee is more than an hour away. Do the math.

"As I went down in the river to pray, studyin' about that good old way..."

Fortunately, I am able to sing and think at the same time. It's a multi-tasking trick that has served me well on the countless occasions when I've been caught in a sleepless, bookless, conversationless state. This time it's the State of Wisconsin.

And so, I think!
What made me fall in love with Whitewater, Wisconsin, I ask myself--because I am clearly, clearly (double "clearly" intentional) smitten with everything Whitewater-ish. I'm moved by the kindness and friendliness of everyone. I'm in love with five or six brilliant and engaged members of the faculty of the Art and English Departments. I'm crazy about the students. And (surprise, surprise) some of the Art is almost remarkable. However, most of the food is not very good---which may be why I'm wide awake singing and recalling the mistake that was the penne pasta with chicken cubes and some kind of flour-y cheese paste.

There is a special sort of delight in finding oneself somewhere one has never fantasized about going and finding that that "somewhere" has a headful of surprises to bestow on the aforementioned self. To lose the ignorant (yes, let's call it ignorant) notion that one knows where the artistic excitement, cultural relevance, sophistication, pleasure and authenticity can be found is to lose a notion so narrow, so parochial, so self-defeating as to be intellectually crippling. I lost such a notion.
I went to Whitewater, Wisconsin to share some of my professional experience and knowledge (and to collect a small honorarium). I returned rested and renewed (yes, I slept on both planes). I returned home with a more open heart and with a secret embarrassment (now shared with you) regarding my narrow preconceived notions about things I should refrain from preconceiving--if I ever hope to become any sort of enlightened individual!

"...and who shall wear the robe and crown, Good Lord, show me the way..."

The infinitive "to Wisconsin" is newly defined as the ability to find inspiration, satisfaction, wisdom and/or love in an unexpected place. Wishing you "Wisconsin"!

FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE--DAMN!

2009-04-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

For someone who claims to use her Gallery as a "vehicle for communication" this writer has experienced some recent (and lamentable) communication failures (mishaps, tragedies, frustrations...).
Subject: my participation in a Code Pink/U.N. supported Delegation to Gaza to celebrate International Women's Day with the women of Gaza and to witness the results of the December/January attacks by Israel on the children, buildings, families, farms, animals, businesses, schools, hospitals, vehicles, and very livelihood of the captive humans on that small strip of land...
Okay, I do see a smidgen of Palestinian-leaning attitude here. However, I didn't have the"attitude" when I embarked on the trip. I was simply curious, adventurous, mildly informed and able to scrape together enough money to make the trip. The attitude definitely built while I was in Rafah, Gaza City and Jabaliya. It continued to build while I participated in meetings with psychologists, relief workers, teachers, lawyers and a wide variety of Palestinians imprisoned by the power of the mightier, the angrier, the crueler Israeli Military. My attitude of the unfairness of it all built in me as my days of witnessing in Gaza passed---wrenchingly, horrifyingly. I was emotionally destroyed by the (first hand) reality of the profound and utter destruction of lives, liberty and the pursuit of basic happiness. But that is not my only area of "attitude."
Not at all!...I have never failed to take into consideration the many Israeli lives that have been greatly harmed as a result of this seemingly endless war of anger, aggression, fear, ignorance and revenge. Revenge! What a futile, senseless way of life! Last week The Santa Fe Reporter published snippets of a long interview with me that a conscientious writer had conducted a few days after my return from Gaza. At one point, she included a list of events from that trip--including my (true) statement that I attended a presentation by two Palestinian women who were arrested and imprisoned (for years) in Israel and...tortured. I didn't make it up. In fact, someone filmed it and I think it can be found on YouTube. The next day, my Staff and I had the unpleasant opportunity of listening to a voice message from an enraged woman--telling me that I had no proof of the torture and that I was causing problems by speaking such nonsense and that I should not meddle in politics and I should stay in my gallery with the horrible grenade. She said she was a woman of peace. And since I too am a woman of peace, I called her to attempt a conversation for clarity. A woman with the same voice as the woman who left the message said that she was the cousin and that the person who called me had gone to Europe that morning and would be gone for months. So...no chance of a peaceful reconciliation there, I guess. At least not for a while. This week The Reporter printed a letter to the editor from a man who seems to be accusing me of not having sympathy for an Israeli family whose 13 year old boy had been "hacked to death by a Palestinian terrorist" recently! He further suggested that my "Code Pink colleagues" and I would not find the torture of a Rabbi and his pregnant wife by "jihadi terrorists in Dubai" reprehensible. Not stopping there, he thinks my colleagues and I would not cry at the horrors of human annihilation in the Sudan. Now, why would he think that my crying over the cruelty delivered upon the of lives and land of Gaza and Gazans (indiscriminate bombing and bulldozing, injuries, death and destruction from white phosphorous) would preclude my crying over cruelty anywhere?! In The Sudan, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Myanmar...wherever the powerful prey on the weak...wherever Evil harms the Innocent...wherever sociopaths and psychopaths harm children and destroy lives, I stand and object. And, I weep!

In The Answers Are The Questions! In The Solutions Are The Problems!

2009-04-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

Back in the 80’s, when interest rates on bank loans were sky high, I experienced a dark period in the early life of my Gallery. I recall spending night after sleepless night and day after stress-filled day searching for ways to pay off a two hundred thousand dollar loan that was (fast) coming due. It was a most uncomfortable time for my fledgling business and for me! I was a foolish young woman intent on the pursuit of “a highly improbable fantasy”--or so I was told by many a would-be expert. Yes, I risked expensive money on a dream that was not based on super sound financial thinking. And yes, I was a naïve, cockeyed optimist---willing to live with whatever consequences came my way. Daily, I chased wild fears from my thoughts. Nightly I counted them like so many sheep: abject failure, humiliation, banishment, bankruptcy, public embarrassment, disappointed children, loss of friends, debtors’ prison…
During one of those dark days (and there were many), my friend Deirdre, a single mother raising two small boys alone, called me in a panic. She was completely and utterly distraught because she owed five hundred dollars and she didn’t have it and she didn’t know how to get it…I tried to comfort her with my much larger tale of woe—to no avail, I’m sure.
That night I spoke to a successful businessman, a savvy mentor of mine. I told him about my friend who was worried about her measly five hundred dollar debt. I made light of it---comparing it to the far more serious situation of my frighteningly significant two hundred thousand dollar debt. The businessman looked at me with a knowing smile. After a long pause, he confessed that he owed two and a half million dollars and he didn’t know where to find it. He needed it by the end of the following week!
And…then I got it!
It’s all relative! The nervousness, the sleepless nights, the fears, the impending embarrassment…it is all the same. If a young single mother owes five hundred dollars and can’t pay it, it’s no less disturbing to her than owing two hundred thousand dollars is to a struggling, inexperienced entrepreneur who doesn’t have it and doesn’t know how to find it. Moreover, the mature investor, caught in a two point five million dollar money bind, is surely not experiencing any greater anxiety than the aforementioned.
It’s all relative!
But not particularly comforting!

This, I think, is how it is now---now, in the economic weirdness that is 2009:
Banks aren’t lending. Workers are struggling. Small businesses are in trouble. Newspapers are folding. (no pun intended) Restaurants are closing. Automobile plants are shutting down. Investment firms are laying off workers. Real estate is soft. Rich people aren’t buying art.
Where is the money? Where did it go? When will it come back? Will any of it come my way? How will I keep my commitments? How will you keep yours? Who (or what) is in charge? What can I do to alleviate my own quiet anxiety? Can I (possibly) assuage the anxiety (I see it on the faces, I hear it in the voices) of the people I meet? What would make me think I could? Why do I have so much? How can I lighten my footprint on the planet? Why are people mean? Who are the fear mongers? How can we disappear them? Why is my country still funding evil war machines? Is this what God intended? Maybe there is no God. How did it all begin? Where and when and how will it end?
And what’s all this about a “new paradigm”???
In The End Is The Beginning…

Taking a Chance on Truth

2009-04-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

…I’m searching for the theme of these current days of mine. Various themes are suggested by this middle of the night mind of mine. The theme is a cocktail of sorts, a recipe, a formula; one not worth recreating in any kitchen or laboratory. It proves nothing and it’s hard to swallow. It’s life, I guess. Just life.

Sadness. Loneliness. Loss. Forgiveness. Abandonment. Discovery. Redemption.

My Life
Once upon a time there was a lonely woman who lived in the middle of a lot of people. She had grown to maturity through a million mistakes. Mistakes made every day, at every turn. And, at all those turns, she judged herself. There were the superficial judgments (too short, too thin, too dumb) and there were the more profound judgments (too insignificant, too misguided, too dangerous, too undesirable, too unforgivable).
Everyone knew her. And no one knew her. She knew she didn’t know herself.

Her Life in “The Oughts”
Wake up. Feed the dog, the cat, the fish, the birds. Take a short walk. Read the paper. Listen to the radio. Drink some tea or coffee. Check e-mail. Water the plants. Do some laundry. Take a shower. Get dressed. Pay bills. Go to work. Figure it out, figure it out. Try to figure it out. Keep going. Keep going. Keep trying to keep going. Smile. Pay attention. Say thank you. Say yes. Say no thank you. Say enough. Say too much. Say it again. Say it too quickly, too softly, too harshly. Say can you see…

It dawns on me…
Tomorrow and tomorrow…petty pace…last syllable…out…out…walking shadow…poor player…fools…dusty death…no more…

Something like that. Something like nothing. Nothing special.

“I am special, ” the ingénue says in the Fantastiks. “Please God please” she implores, “don’t let me be normal.” But she is normal. She is some kind of normal. She is aspects of normal. Normal says, “Don’t let me be normal.”

I’m thinking about everyone. Right now, in the middle of the night, having over-eaten and having drunk a bit of wine, I’m thinking about the everyone-ness of us. Everyone. The people who are lonely and the people who don’t know that they are lonely. And the lonely people who don’t know that the people they know are lonely people. No one says so. No. Say it isn’t so.

There are lonely people who appear…Wait. Wait a minute. I am no Eleanor fucking Rigby. I’m not lonely. I’m simply alone. No, not simply alone. Profoundly alone. And sad. But not the kind of sad that can be erased with a song or a few comforting words. And not the kind of sad that can be fixed with a fortune or a soul mate. Profoundly and unalterably sad.

Telling the Truth
Speaking truth to loneliness. It’s okay. It is, after all, next to Godliness. Loneliness is.
Lonely as a cloud. Lonely like a cloud: just vapor and fluff, floating in and around, changing shape, blown by this and that, affected/not affected by this and that. Formed. Unformed. Uninformed. Uniformed.
See…don’t see.
See the shining sea!
Sea of possibilities. See the possibilities.
Sea of change. Change of scene. Scene of destruction.

See, this is a place in my mind, a moment in time. In impatient syncopation.
A bit out of step. But in the flow.
Too sensitive. Too insensitive. What’s the difference? Both are problematic.
The best becomes the worst. The inside is the outside. Still and always, the energy is on the line where opposites meet. Where they fight or join or retreat or disappear. Where the enemy becomes the friend. Where the weak inherit the earth.

I live on the line between old and young, between dark and light, between evil and good, between transparent and opaque. In my solitude, I curse myself, I amuse myself, I forgive myself, I encounter myself. I erase myself and re-draw myself.
In encountering myself, I discover that I feel disappointed. That is all there is. This is all there is. It all means something. It all means nothing. All and Everything. Being and Nothingness. It’s all been said and read and written and forgotten. Before. And after. And here I am in the middle of the night, tap, tap, tapping on the bones of the misbegotten. Tugging on my own bones. Stretching. Longing to figure out the unfigureoutable. Finding myself in the darkness of my knowing. It is over. It is beginning. It is continuing. It is continuing to be over. It is beginning to continue.

THE WOMEN OF RAFAH

2009-04-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

For days, I have been attempting to write about a memorable afternoon in Gaza. I have been struggling to find the words to describe the remarkable Women of Rafah who greeted four fortunate foreigners from the Code Pink Delegation. I want to share with others (with the World, actually) just how important this day was for me. I need to find the words and the tone to communicate the warmth and love of those special hours, with those gentle women. Usually words come easily to me. But no, not this time. Because this experience, for me, was transformational! Too big for easy words!

FALLING IN LOVE IN RAFAH

In a matter of minutes, upon entering a compound in Rafah, Gaza on International Women's Day, I fell in love. First, I fell in love with a dozen women who sat in the sand around a fire making bread and showing me how to make bread the Gazan way. I tried my hand at the technique. It was not as easy as it looked. (It's all in the wrist and in the timing!) Next, I fell in love with the seventy-five women (+/-) in the community room---who greeted me with applause and smiles and then with embraces and kisses. I fell in love with the day, with the palpable joy in the air and with the immediate sense of sisterhood that filled the room and filled my heart. In that place, I experienced a kind of loving friendship that (frankly, sadly) I had never experienced before. Not in any family gatherings. Not in any long ago middle school girls' groups. Not in any of my various workplaces. Not in dance classes. Not in consciousness-raising groups. Never! Nowhere! I don't ever recall experiencing the instantaneous, magical love that I experienced in Rafah, on Sunday, March 8th 2009.

Later that day, in the lobby of the Gaza City hotel, I wrote in my journal: "This day was worth the whole trip."

In the all-purpose room, of the local center, in a shabby part of the prison that is the Gaza Strip, in the company of Muslim women of all ages, I found a true and complete sense of sisterhood. In the happy company of scores of women in all manner of dress---from the fully veiled consevative abayas some women wore to the stylish contemporary outfits of many of the younger women----I experienced a deep feeling of belonging. Renewal. Truth. Connection. Love.

On impulse, I gave a short speech that one of the Palestinian women translated for me. It went something like this: "On this special day, dedicated to the honor of women everywhere in the world, I am grateful to have the opportunity to thank you for your kind invitation and to acknowledge the warm bond of understanding among us that has been clearly evident from the moment we got off the bus and entered this place. As daughters, sisters, wives, mothers and grandmothers, (and I have been all of those) we dedicate ourselves to the never-ending responsibility and opportunity of bestowing our love and nurturing on our families, neighbors and communities. I am very happy to be with you today to celebrate all that we are and all that we share and all that we want for our families. We want simple things: safety, shelter, nourishing food, clean water, health care, access to information and education and the opportunity to worship and celebrate in our chosen ways. I'm sure I speak for my Code Pink colleagues when I say, 'Shokron, shokron!' We are thankful for your warm and welcoming hospitality! Happy International Women's Day!"

The Women of Gaza have lost so much. They have suffered for so long. Their homes have been damaged or destroyed. Their husbands, brothers and children have been killed. Supplies for the basics of life are difficult to obtain. Unemployment is at 80%...

One of the high points in an afternoon of high points, was watching the play that the women had created and rehearsed to present to us on International Women's Day. Their unknown audience was a group of Code Pink Women who, as they were told, might or might not succeed in getting across the closed border with Egypt and who might or might not be able to share the day with them. The women were hopeful, prepared and enthusiastic. Just four members of the fifty-eight person Delegation (facilitated by the United Nations Relief Workers Agency) had the privilege, the honor and the remarkable opportunity of being part of that audience--part of that laughing, dancing example of feminie solidarity.

I am imagining a reverse situation---a situation in which several women from Gaza come to my city---guests of a women's organization in my town. I imagine the courteous cordiality, the little cookies, the polite greetings, the proffered gift, the pleasant curiosity...But I can't imagine an outpouring of love from typical club women in this country. I can't imagine the sincere embraces and the kisses, kisses, kisses...

Why? Where are we hiding our capacity for grace and our willingness to approach others with our hearts fully open and our guards down? Is it these current and challenging days of ours that shrink our genuine openness? Have we closed down our main conduits for true connection with others? Connections to those deep and true places of love? Have I? I have. Perhaps, somewhere along the many years I've spent in this body, in my on-going experience as a woman of a certain age (and social and political persuasions) perhaps I shut down--or never opened to certain kinds of love...But now...now things are different. The Women of Gaza have connected me to a part of myself that I want to value, celebrate and cherish.
Forever!

Yes, Cherish is the word!

FORGIVENESS, PERHAPS!

2009-03-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

I'm exploring FORGIVENESS---as an ideal, as a practice, as a virtue, as an ability and as a solution...
Approximately every seven years or so, I become imbroiled in some sort of irrational, unnecessary and unfortunate clash of personalities---with someone who holds an intimate and important place in my life---leading to a breakdown of communication, a loss of confidence, the threat of a lawsuit, an ignominious "divorce" (marriage or partnership) and/or a lingering sense of failure. These clashes affect my dreams, my solitude, my business, my future, my financial security, my very well-being.
Perhaps there is another way of being in this World!
I might very well be exaggerating--to make a point---but let me get to the point I intend to make and then we can judge. Perhaps all these lamentable situations are the result of some sort of a forgiveness error. I say "perhaps" because I write, live and think with an ever-present "element of doubt." Hiding or languishing behind the word "perhaps" (and sometimes the word "maybe") is perhaps the best way for me to muse on truths that may be beyond my ken. Maybe not!
It took me a long time to contemplate forgiving the person who (practically) swindled my family out of their home. It took a long time to befriend (even marginally) the people who constructed a one-sided real estate contract (in their favor) that ultimately caused me to lose my Canyon Road Gallery. I still can't quite forgive former Gallery partners who took advantage of my distaste for (read: ignorance of) contracts, accounting, budgets and other good business practices to force me to confront that distaste (and that ignorance) in a critical, bankruptcy-impending moment.
It's comforting to have a place to place blame when the pain of one's own mistakes is too weighty, too thorny to acknowledge! Perhaps (?) that's my point. And it's a point for me to consider in the middle of this contemplation on forgiveness.

Accuser/Victim, forgive thyself!!!

...As she lay in her coffin, all powdered and combed and unfamiliarly regal-looking, I forgave my Mother. Finally. Belatedly. I put my small (and treasured) ruby ring on her finger and I asked her to forgive me.
I think she did.
I know that all the debilitating pain and the decades-old angry stuff floated away...up, up through the sparkle-y, plastic ceiling of the Funeral Home somewhere in South Jersey.

But...Did I forgive myself for being the primary architect, contractor and project manager of the formidable wall between us, the wall that would not, could not be breached?
?Quien sabe? What did that wall "wall out" of my Life?

Time out for a quiz!
Which comes first??

1) Asking for forgiveness and then being forgiven?

2) Being forgiven and then forgiving?

3) Forgiving yourself and then forgiving the other/others?

4) Wanting to be forgiven?

5) Being ready to forgive?

6) Understanding the Power of the act of Forgiveness?

7) None of the above/All of the above?

8) Something else? (What?)

Forgive me if, perhaps, this slightly disjointed, highly personal, Dear Diary-style rambling is not quite what you wanted to read when you visited this Blog...I acknowledge that (perhaps) I've included too much exposition in this entry...exposition that was originally intended to lead to a musing on the importance of Forgiveness in our world and the utter lack of authentic forgiveness in our world. We hold grudges. We point fingers. We assign blame. We resist looking at our own responsibility. We compromise our integrity to hide our complicitness (is that a word?). We do all that (some of it, some of us, sometimes) in our homes, in our workplaces, in our communities, in our countries... We do that in our one and only world. We blame. We ignore. We refuse. We impede. We deny. We exclude. We defend...When, all along, the blaming, ignoring, refusing, impeding, denying, excluding...prevent the grace and the beauty and the opportunity for peace that come with...

FORGIVENESS!
I forgive you, them, her, him, us, myself...
At least, I want to...and, perhaps, that is a pretty good start!

When We Buy Art...

2009-03-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

This week I completed Phase II* of an exhaustive study on the importance of Art in our troubled world economy. It is clear to me---and I want to make it clear to others (to everyone!)---that when a person (corporation, museum, foundation) buys Art---especially from a reputable Gallery or by a living, breathing Artist---he, she or it is helping to improve the global financial picture in countless ways!

My study included consulting an extremely savvy and thoughtful group of facebook cognoscenti. The question I posed was: What businesses/professions derive a substantial or measureable (?) part of their income (read: livelihood!) from the sale of Art? The response from the facebook cognoscenti was overwhelming---three or four times the response received by me, from any subject or question previously posted to my hundreds of "FoFs."**

In the interest of Time and Space, I will present a partial list of those who benefit--directly or somewhat less directly--from money derived from the sale of Art. For the purposes of this research and in the interest of full disclosure, my findings focus on "contemporary" (that means now or nearly now) Art and Artists.

Herewith the aforementioned list: framers, photographers, lighting specialists, psychiatrists, appraisers, interior decorators and designers, graphic designers, art supply stores and manufacturers, landlords, teachers, shippers, chemists, second-hand shops, bars, restaurants, coffee shops, Internet cafes, book stores, hardware stores, animal shelters, art consultants, insurance companies, mortgage companies, supermarkets, astrologists, massage therapists, automotive supply shops, gallery owners, gallery staff, not-for-profit organizations, hotels, spas, bus drivers, truck drivers, train conductors, airline companies, airline employees, match-making companies, mailorder catalogue companies, journalists, magazines, newspapers, advertising executives, housesitters, tarot card readers, gardeners, window washers, dentists, doctors, daycare centers, environmentalists...

And, mind you, that is just a partial list.

I am making the point that Art and Artists are a critical and integral part of our society, our economy...When I read or hear that Congress considers Art and Artists to be mere "earmarks" and when the National Endowment for the Arts (practically) has to hold a bake sale to raise money for support of painters, poets, sculptors, actors, photographers...Well, to use a technical term, it really "pisses me off."

And so, I implore you to Support the Arts, please!
Take a poet to lunch. Buy a drawing. Hire a faux painter. Purchase a sculpture.
Give Art a chance to enrich your surroundings, to elevate your spirit and to make the world go round! Perhaps ART can succeed where Wall Street, Politics and Big Business have failed...

* Phase II is an essay contest on the value of art in this economy, sponsored by LDCA. $500 first prize. The essays are currently being read by a panel of three experts. Details to follow!

** Friends on Facebook

WHY AM I BLOGGING???

2009-03-27T07:34:00.000-07:00

To distract myself. To attack myself. To challenge myself. To confuse myself. To lose myself. To expand myself. To sandbag myself. To upset myself. To re-set myself. To ambush myself. To bamboozle myself. To forget myself. To beget myself. To re-write myself. To ignite myself. To delight myself. To fight myself. To amuse myself. To excuse myself. To lose myself. To expose myself. To unclothe myself. To de-frost myself. To get lost in myself. To review myself. To renew myself. To acknowledge myself. To polish myself. To abolish myself. To spill myself. To thrill myself. To chill myself. To re-build myself. To re-direct myself. To inspect myself. To allow myself. To disavow myself. To replenish myself. To finish myself. To share myself. To spare myself. To be myself. To free myself. To flee myself. To embarrass myself. To harass myself. To explain myself. To contain myself. To re-frame myself. To re-draw myself. To withdraw myself . To define myself. To align myself. To refine myself. To unwind myself. To remind myself. To inspire myself. To re-wire myself. To teach myself. To reach myself. To preach to myself. To work on myself. To jerk on myself. To re-fuel myself. To re-school myself. To re-tool myself. To prepare myself. To scare myself. To command myself. To abandon myself. To play with myself. To stay with myself. To pray with myself. To sashay with myself. To forgive myself. To re-live myself. To unburden myself. To unfurl myself. To uncover myself. To unnerve myself. To berate myself. To celebrate myself. To elevate myself. To liberate myself. To exasperate myself…

And...To communicate to you!

TO GAZA AND BACK

2009-03-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

Destruction and tragedy are everywhere in Gaza!
Buildings have been bombed. Homes have been bulldozed to smithereens. Schools and hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. People have been killed or maimed! The basic requirements for a simple life, in this densely populated piece of Earth are in short supply (or totally missing) for the millions who are living in what has been called "the world's largest outdoor prison." And still, it is a beautiful place--because of the people!
On International Women's Day, I had the honor and privilege of celebrating with dozens of Gazan Women in a community center in Rafah City, Gaza. This supreme opportunity came as a result of responding to an e-mailed invitation from CODE PINK that simply said:

"Come With Us to Gaza...
Humanitarian Delegation to Gaza for International Women's Day
Pay Tribute to the Women of Gaza..."

"...Program: Meetings with UN and government officials, local women (including victims of Israeli violence), humanitarian and development agencies, journalists, health workers and politcal analysts. Visit areas devastated by Israeli attacks."

The actual program included everything that was stated and much more---so much more, in fact, that a week after returning to Santa Fe, I am still processing and remembering and questioning and wondering how to contextualize the experience. Perhaps it's not possible.

Perhaps it's not possible (for an everyday citizen of this country) to begin to contain the experiences of standing in the rubble of towns and settlements, listening to the gentle Palestinians tell their stories of loss, of torture and hearing the professional reports and assessments of what the damage (physical, economic, psychological, environmental) has done/is doing...to the children...to the farmers...to the fishermen...

It is my nature to wonder. And so I wonder what can be done? Who can show up to relieve/remedy/eliminate the horrors that are being inflicted on this culture, on these families, on the innocent children tenuously surviving on this little piece of disputed land?

Don't tell me bombs and tanks and bulldozers and white phosphorous are the answers! Don't tell me the aggression towards these people is simply the result of their aggression towards others. I know in my heart that all these horrors and all these tragedies are, in large part, the result of ancient fears and modern greed. What I want to know, what I do not know, is how do we rid ourselves of those fears and that greed? How do we understand our actions and how do we forgive ourselves for our transgressions? And when will that forgiveness show up in the form of Love? Generosity? Understanding? Cooperation? Who in the World is condoning the torture and destruction that is being delivered upon our brothers and sisters here, there and everywhere on this beleaguered planet of ours?

Of course I can't contextualize my experience in Gaza! It's unfathomable!

Money, Money, No Money!

2009-03-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

This morning, I am remembering an honest, non-decorative painting that I showed at the inaugural exhibition of my Canyon Road Gallery in 1980. It featured three worried heads, with furrowed brows and rheumy eyes, set against a garish orange background. Across the top of the canvas, in big black letters, was the refrain, "Need Money, Need Money, Need Money." I wish I had purchased the painting*--but I didn't have the money!
Decades later, in the privacy of this Wednesday morning, I imagine that painting hanging on a wall opposite this writing desk. It wouldn't look nearly as good as the gold-framed painting of a Myanmar Tribal Woman that hangs in that place. And surely it did not/does not have the etheral beauty of the Richard Hogan oil that is winking at my peripheral vision and intruding into my consciousness. Had that painting been hanging there, next to the fireplace, it would no doubt be contributing to the creeping fears about my economy that I am working to erase. I take a moment to look at another work of art in my collection: Eugene Newmann's work on paper of three abstract heads (coincidence?? there are those who say there are no coincidences!) It is mesmorizing in its intelligent beauty. Over and over again, in one way or another, ART restores my confidence in Life. It refocuses my mind from worry to wonder.
Sometimes it takes an hour or so--like now!
At sunrise today, walking down the driveway with my dog, I found myself repeating, mantra-like, the refrain from that long-ago, orange painting: "need money, need money, need money."
But, I have money! Perhaps I should have been repeating "need more money, need more money..."
Now, with the sun beginning to shine through the window to my right, I widen my internal gaze to look at my whole picture. I am beginning to concentrate on the broad perspective of my financial reality. What can I do? I know! I can call forth my optimistic self--the self that has served the Gallery and me for over thirty years. This self notes, this morning, that although my bank accounts look and feel skimpy this month, there are countless options at my disposal. My best option is optimism.
Focusing optimistically, I begin to list the considerable professional assets of LDCA: a great staff; excellent artists; a beautiful space; the synergy of a creative team; a vision of a successful April, May, June...And I utter aloud my favorite cheerleading couplet: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it: Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."** And I move my thoughts away from the doom department into the place where ideas and opportunities are waiting for me.
Yes, these are tough times for most of us. We have difficult decisions to make. We have lost stuff: money, energy, faith...Promises have been broken. But we must, must, must find ways to retrieve those things. I want to do just that!
I am imagining a painting---exactly the same size as the "Need Money" painting---but instead of a garish background with troubled faces, this painting has a soothing green background and the three faces are smiling, confident and inspiring. The words, in GOLD, say: "Have Grace, Have Courage, Have Love." With those traits, along with a healthy dose of optimism and some energy and strength (physical/emotional) and the vision to see through a few veils of fear into an expansive view of a positive future, TODAY will be (already is) a wonderful day!

* by Clayton Campbell
** by Goethe

Let the Blogging Begin!

2009-03-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

Now that I've navigated my way to the posting page of this brand spanking new Blog Site, I vow to write (almost) every day. What will I blog about? Fair question. I will blog about the important things that come to my attention...I will blog about truth and courage and adventure and optimism and problem-solving and risk-taking and memories and travel and fears and cultural awareness and human rights and the Art World and poetry and fear and loathing and renewal and reinvention and candor and politics and friendship and discovery and family and forgiveness and the hero's/heroine's journey and money and pets and childhood and secrets and chance encounters and memories and failures and aging and trancendence...
In other words: everything that I can and do think about as I wander, skip, slog, dance, sleepwalk and cartwheel through my Life. When I learn how to post pictures, I will post pictures!
This is my Inaugural Post!

Doves land on Golden Grenade.

2009-03-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

At some point over the weekend, an unknown person
or persons attached two dove figurines to artist Martin
Cary Horowitz's golden grenade sculpture in front of
the gallery.

LDCA gets a big, fat pink kiss.

2009-03-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

February 12, 2009 the front door to the gallery was
tagged with a paintball gun.