… when they look as cool as this, anyway.  I caught these clouds one morning on the UAA campus at the beginning of October 2003, on the first of what I still remember so clearly as a two or three-day period of some really remarkable skies in Anchorage.

Even though I was feeling pretty crappy yesterday, I like the cloud pic in my yesterday post too.  I took it from my dentist’s office a few months ago.  I take a lot of cloud pics, because — well, yeah.  Clouds are not really all about bleakness.  It just feels like that sometimes, when one is inhabited by grey.  But the grey I feel when I’m in that state of depression I call the grey is not full of lifegiving rain, or a blizzard of snow, or even the destructive force of Job’s Voice from the Whirlwind — like that Oklahoma tornado I posted last week.  The grey is just this featureless, lifeless, blah.

But when it dissolves away… ahhhhh.

Or aha.

The aha! experience — that’s what I call the thing that happened to me in August 1984, when self-hatred went away — one of the central defining experiences of my life.  (But it was my sister-in-law Linda who first called it that — thanks Linda! & happy birthday!)  I wrote a brief account of it a few years ago.  Very brief account, which leaves out a lot.

As soon as it happened, it’s as if I could feel all the universe flowing into me, breathing in & out with me.  That lasted a long time, & I can still feel it on my best days.  I later came to call it the cool breeze — another one of those phrases for my various feeling states.  But here’s the deal: I found I could feel it even when I was sad.

One day, not long after the aha, I had a big falling out with a friend of mine who lived in that big trailer court that used to be at the corner of Muldoon & Debarr in east Anchorage.  Bang! — I slammed out the door & left her, & I walked a long ways crying about it, until I stopped and sat on Russian Jack Hill overlooking traffic.  It was late September.  I was still crying, but at the same time I could see the Chugach Mountains just to the east of Anchorage dusted with their first snow — termination dust, we call it here — & it was beautiful, & I could feel that beauty inside me instead of just perceive it intellectually. And here I was still crying. And I suddenly realized: This is what sadness feels like. Not depression: but sadness. I had never known that feeling before.  It was like other feelings I hadn’t known before, like beauty that I could see with my eyes & recognize with my intellect, but not feel at all.

Now I could feel it.  Ever since then, I’ve been able to feel it… except when I take one of those dips, long or short, into the pit or the grey — but now those times are the exception, rather than the rule.

But it still always feels pretty damn good when the blanket of yuck slides off me. & I can breathe again.

Day followed day, the old stream of time,
just the same as before.
But each day I saw the mountains change –
one day growing gold in the afternoon sun –
one day dusted white by the season’s first snow –
one day touched by clouds as soft as white roses –
I could see them and breathe them and touch them and feel them.
Each day I saw the mountains change –

so did change find me.

– from “Alaska Love Poem” (1984)

That was half my life ago.  I thought at the time that the depression/despair gig & I were entirely quits, which of course proved not to be the case; but on the other hand, I never returned to the self-hatred; & it was a fundamental step #2 in having the stuff I needed to deal with depression/despair ever after.  (The first step having been to accept my lesbianism five years previously.)

So… I’m feeling pretty good now.  Heading over to my friend Sylvia’s for our normal Wednesday night get-together.  Tonight, we’re re-watching the pilot for “Caprica” as a refresher for its season premiere this Friday.  I’m stopping to get some Bear Tooth food on the way there.  Life could be better, life could be worse — life goes on.  And right now, that’s just about right.

Here’s some more clouds from October 1, 2003, with some Chugach Mountains thrown in for good measure.

Related posts:

1. Dissolve
2. Pausing under the clouds: A how-to guide for getting out of the grey
3. The grey

President Obama made a statement this morning—

CBS Special Report: Obama on Haiti quake relief

At the time I visited, the most recent comment on the video above, from user Gorilla396, read:

I was waiting for him to say, “Just another billion dollars, no biggy, right?” The U.S. gov’t needs to stop spending money in other counrties that will never be able to pay it back or return the favor. When are we as a country gonna stop being the “Emergency Services” of the world? He seems to forget or not care that he has spent trillions of dollars already.  Just another counrty we shouldn’t be in.

But see Renard Sexton’s article today at FiveThirtyEight.com about the U.S.’s relationship to Haiti, which includes a history of occupation & interventionism for the protection of American business interests.  We continue to have an economic relationship with Haiti:

Today, the U.S. remains the largest trade destination for Haitian goods (more than 70 percent of exports), while imports from the United States (34 percent) are even higher than Haiti’s next door neighbor, the Dominican Republic (23 percent). U.S. official aid to the country is quite significant (USD 260 million according to OECD DAC), though quite variable, with large spikes during Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994 and 1995, and a tripling of aid from 2004 to 2008, after the 2004 coup that threw President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power for the last time. [Ref #1]

I’m proud that my president and my nation is stepping up to the plate.  Besides, it’s not as if the U.S. is the only nation working to bring aid to Haiti in a time of such desperate need — Wikipedia editors, in the Wikipedia article on the quake, have been keeping track of the numerous countries & organizations which are working to render assistance .  There are also lots of international organizations seeking to bring aid.  Public Radio International’s program “The World” has compiled a list of reliable aid organizations that you can donate to.  (But beware of scammers.)  I donated to the International Response Fund of the American Red Cross, which has already pledged $1 million to Haiti relief.

Christianist lackwit Pat Robertson, in one of his typical & predictable damn them when they’re down/blame the victim statements, claimed in a broadcast of the “700 Club” this morning that Haiti “swore a pact to the devil” in order to free themselves of French colonial rule, and that as a result “they have been cursed by one thing after the other” ever since. [Ref #2] Yep, just like the residents of New Orleans brought Hurricane Katrina on themselves too.

This is the kind of bastardization of history — not to mention lack of compassion — one can always expect from a Christianist like Robertson.  This is their simplistic & immature response to the problem of evil in the world — what in theology is called theodicy, which attempts to reconcile the belief in God with the existence of evil, whether moral or physical.  Like Job’s comforters in the biblical Book of Job, Robertson’s kneejerk response is to blame any harm that befalls a person or an entire nation on that person or nation (or their ancestors).  But remember: the Voice in the Whirlwind rebuked Job’s comforters, & vindicated Job:

[T]he Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me [the thing that is] right, as my my servant Job [hath]. [Job 42.7, KJV]

I recommend that Pat Robertson take note.  And shut the frak up.

Thank goodness for all those Christians who really are Christians, & give their money to relief efforts instead of creeps like Robertson.  Thank goodness that most people of faith throughout the world believe in something other than the Big Bully in the Sky God of Robertson & his ilk — a god which by Robertson’s own account is capable of committing greater cruelties & evils against large populations than the “devil” simply because (supposedly) their ancestors fought off another (no doubt Big Bully in the Sky God-sanctioned) evil — such the French-imposed slavery that ended in Haiti with the Haitian Revolution (1701–1804).

Steve Aufrecht at What Do I Know? gives another reason than Wrath of the Big Bully in the Sky God for high Haitian casualties:

Wrath of God or lack of adequate building standards?

God is one of the stories people use to explain how the earth works.  “Government is evil” is another story that people use to explain things.  Another story we can use is that much of what government does is invisible and we don’t notice it until it isn’t working.  Zoning rules, including building standards, are often seen as one of the evils of government.  People resent government rules that say they can’t build a house the way they want or that they have to use a method that will increase the costs considerably. And sometimes general rules sometimes don’t make sense in specific situations and there are cases of corrupt building inspectors.

But Port-au-Prince’s apparent devastation compared to San Francisco’s relatively minor damage shows how science and government can set standards for construction, which, if enforced, save lives.  As individuals we are always tempted to cut corners when our dollars don’t match our desires, but the law encourages us to use methods that were developed with potential disasters (fires, hurricanes, as well as earthquakes) in mind.  Again, I realize these rules are not perfect and as the science improves old methods get changed.  And humans who enforce the rules aren’t necessarily consistent or honest.  But looking at the difference between the damage in Haiti in 2010 and in San Francisco shows the value good, well enforced, building codes make.   The low death toll in San Francisco is, in part, a result of one of the invisible roles government plays in our lives when it is working right. [Ref #3]

Now, that makes a lot of sense.  Haiti’s people need help in the form of humanitarian relief to recover from the immediate effects of the quake; but also to establish and maintain a government that is responsible to its people & its needs — including good building codes.

Meanwhile, visit at least one of those reliable aid organizations I already mentioned and pony up.

And with regard to theodicy,  remember again the lessons of Job & the Voice from the Whirlwind: bad things sometimes do happen to good people.  Celebrate the goodness of the Haitian people, & help them.

A special shout-out to my friend Lynne, who lived in Haiti for a time & knows this.

Update:

Matthew Yglesias unpacks Pat Robertson’s religious bias & ignorance of history:

[T]he Haitian Revolution began in 1791, years before Napoleon took over France as Consul. Napoleon III didn’t come to power until 1848. So clearly Robertson is confused on the basic history. But I believe that Robertson is referring to the Bois Caïman Ceremony that in Haitian national mythology initiated the revolution. This was a Vodou ceremony and the following text is normally attributed to its leader, Boukman:

The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light. The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer. The white man’s god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It’s He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It’s He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men’s god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in all our hearts.

If you were a white, Catholic French person or Haitian plantation owner, I can see why you would characterize this as a prayer offered “to the devil.” The black Haitians are postulating the existence of two Gods, one for the whites and one for the blacks. The whites regard the God they pray to as the one true God. So if the blacks are praying to some second god, and doing it with a Vodou ceremony, it stands to reason that they’re engaged in a satanic ritual of some sort.

But there’s no reason for 21st century Americans to accept this interpretation of the story. From the Haitian perspective, I think you’d say they were just praying to God for his assistance and asserting the justice of their cause. This is what pretty much everyone does before heading into battle. [Ref #4]

Well, that’s not new: one of the foundations of Christianist ideology is to assume that any religion (including much of Christianity) that does not kowtow to the narrow strictures of Christianist ideology is “satanic.” Remember, Christianism isn’t identical with Christianity: it’s a religio-political ideology that believes that (its version of) Christianity is superior to all other religions, & seeks to establish itself as the dominant political power to the exclusion & even eradication of other religions & belief systems (not to mention the people who believe in them).   It’s basically about power grab through religion (much as with the religio-political ideology Islamism – which is not the same as the religion of Islam.)

I’m with Yglesias.  Boukman’s god sounds not unlike the god upon whom the biblical King David calls upon time & again in the Psalms, & his prayer sounds not that much different from the psalms of David that called upon God’s help against David’s enemies.

Update #2:

Ta-Nehisi Coates names it: Pat Robertson was “equating an attempt by slaves to claim their freedom with ‘a pact with the devil’”:

The next time your wondering why there are so few black Republicans, consider the fact this unreconstructed Confederate was not long ago one of their greatest crusaders. Consider that he is equating the resistance of slavery, with a rejection of Christ. And there’s an African-American right next to him, nodding in agreement.

Fuck Pat Robertson. Fuck the “Christian” Broadcasting Network. And fuck any black person who’d nod reverently while a white supremacist slanders our founding fathers. She should be ashamed of herself. [Ref #5]

References

1. 13 Jan 2010. “Haiti and United States Inextricably Linked” by Renard Sexton (FiveThirtyEight).
2. 13 Jan 2010. “Robertson’s ‘true story’: Haiti ‘swore a pact to the devil’ to get ‘free from the French’ and ‘ever since, they have been cursed’.” (Media Matters for America).
3. 13 Jan 2010. “Seven Point 0″ by Steve Aufrecht (What Do I Know?).
4. 13 Jan 2010. “Did Haiti Form a Pact With the Devil?” by Matthew Yglesias (Think Progress: Yglesias).
5. 13 Jan 2010. “Professional Bigot Pat Robertson Does It Again” by Ta-Nehisi Coates (TheAtlantic.com).

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-13: Haiti earthquake
2. Haiti: Disaster profiteering v. helping Haiti rebuild for Haitians
3. The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-15: Haiti relief efforts

Oklahoma tornado, 3 May 1999. Photo by Daphne Zaras, VORTEX-99, National Severe Storms Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Click on photo for further info.

I mentioned this poem last week, if not by name.

Job 42.13

She also heard the voice — the whirlwind’s bellow,
the blast of noise and air that collapsed my knees.
Proud like a prince I stood to accuse the Unnameable,
but the wind threw me down to lie again in dust.
It pushed her, and she lay fallen beside me.

The storm rumbled and thundered.  The wind tore at my clothing
and took my breath.  I could not stand or speak,
and she had not the breath to make a curse.
Here was the justice of the Unnameable!
We would be smitten by that self-same howling wind
that had poured from the desert like a band of outlaws
to destroy my sons and murder my daughters.

And then was stillness, as death, a steep silence.
And look! we raised our eyes to the maelstrom’s clouded throat,
dizzied.  Spinning vapors formed and broke away and blew;
lightning flashed in the turbulent dark belly of the wind.
I was dust to be blown by that wind  but was not blown.
I stood under the very eye of the Unnameable.  And within me grew a stillness.

There are tears now in her eyes as she watches them play —
yes, seven sons, three daughters — as before.
I rejoice in them, but also grieve for our windlost children —
the only love I gave them was to make burnt offerings
against sins I feared lay hidden in their unknown hearts.

But listen! they laugh! she laughs!  And I laugh, too.

[January 26, 1995]

About this poem

In the biblical book of Job, Job, a good an righteous man, loses almost everything, including all his (adult) children who are killed by a whirlwind from the desert. The main body of the book is a masterful poem in which Job’s “comforters” insist he must have committed a grave sin for such evil to befall him — an accusation he denies.  Bad things do, after all, happen to good people, regardless of the conventional wisdom his “friends” assert. Job confronts, & is confronted by, the unnameable god itself in the form of the Voice from the Whirlwind, who ultimately vindicates him and returns to him (and his wife) all that had been lost — including children in the same numbers as before: “He also had seven sons and three daughters” (Job 42.13 KJV).

With this poem I wanted to counter the notion that his new children were merely “replacement units” for those children he & his wife had lost.

Midway through writing the poem, searching for language to describe his experience, I consulted a discarded textbook I had scavenged, Essentials of Meteorology, & there came across the account of a Kansas farmer named Will Keller who had seen the inside of a tornado.  His account was taken down by Alonzo A. Justice of the Weather Bureau Office (now the National Weather Service) in Dodge City, Kansas:

On the afternoon of June 22, 1928, I was out in my field with my family looking over the ruins of our wheat crop which had just been completely destroyed by a hailstorm. I noticed an umbrella-shaped cloud in the west and southwest and from its appearance suspected that there was a tornado in it. The air had that peculiar oppressiveness which nearly always precedes a tornado.

I saw at once that my suspicions were correct, for hanging from the greenish-black base of the cloud were three tornadoes.  One was perilously near and apparently heading for my place. I lost no time hurrying my family to our cyclone cellar. The family had entered the cellar and I was in the doorway just about to enter and close the door when I decided to take a last look at the approaching twister. I have seen a number of these, so I did not lose my head, although the approaching tornado was an impressive sight. The surrounding country is level and there was nothing to obstruct the view. There was little or no rain falling from the cloud. Two of the tornadoes were some distance away and looked like great ropes dangling from the parent cloud, but the one nearest was shaped more like a funnel, with ragged clouds surrounding it. It appeared much larger and more energetic than the others and occupied the central position of the cloud, with a massive cumulus dome being directly over it.

Steadily the tornado came on, the end gradually rising above the ground. I probably stood there only a few seconds, but was so impressed with the sight that it seemed like a long time. At last the great shaggy end of the funnel hung directly overhead.  Everything was as still as death. There was a strong, gassy odor and it seemed as though I could not breathe. There was a screaming, hissing sound coming directly from the end of the funnel. I looked up and, to my astonishment I saw right into the heart of the tornado. There was a circular spinning in the center of the tornado, about 50 to 100 feet in diameter, which extended straight up for a distance of at least one-half mile, as best I could judge under the circumstances. The walls of this opening were rotating clouds and the whole was brilliantly lighted with constant flashes of lightning which zigzagged from side to side. Had it not been for the lightning I could not have seen the opening, or any distance into it.

Around the lower rim of the great vortex, small tornadoes were constantly forming and breaking away. These looked like tails as they writhed their way around the end of the funnel. It was these that made the hissing sound. I noticed that the direction of rotation of the great whirl was counterclockwise, but some of the smaller tornadoes rotated clockwise. The opening was entirely hollow, except for something I could not exactly make out — perhaps a detached wind cloud — that kept moving up and down. The tornado was not traveling at a great speed so I had plenty of time to get a good view of the whole thing, inside and out.

Will Keller
Kansas farmer

Will Keller’s account became a major source for the poem.

I posted a copy of the first draft to a discussion list I was on.  One listmember gave me this feedback:

I really like this because it deals with something I keep running across when I teach the Book of Job in one of my humanities classes — Mrs. Job loses all HER property and children too, and ALSO has to put up with Job kvetching all the time, and furthermore has to make coffee for his no-good friends every day, and she doesn’t even get a book named after her.  All she gets, in fact, depending on which of the rabbinic legends about her you believe, is the chance to have ten MORE children just when she probably figured she could be through with all that, or a premature death from “bitterness”, as the rabbis say.  So thank you very much for this poem.  I would appreciate your permission to use it in class.

I couldn’t have been happier. (And I said yes.)

Related posts:

1. Good, evil, & great waves of god
2. Stone Poem
3. You are old, Father William: Two renditions

This is not actually my cover of the classic Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) album Buddha And The Chocolate Box originally issued in April 1974 when I was still in junior high. It is, rather, a simple observation of what I saw today, what in fact I see almost every Saturday, when I got to Side Street Espresso to write: a Buddha in the coffee shop. He’s been hanging out there for several months.

He weighs nearly 700 pounds and is about 40 inches tall (sitting, of course — I’m not sure how tall he’d be if he stood up), and he was handcarved of white-grey marble in the Quang Nam Province of Vietnam. He was purchased there and brought to Alaska by Suel Jones, a former U.S. Marine who fought in Vietnam.

Mr. Jones is offering him for sale for $3,500 as a fundraiser for Veterans for Peace, & I hope somebody will pick him up (being very careful of their backs, of course), because it’s a good organization — including veterans both male & female of all eras and duty stations from the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 to the conflicts going on now in Iraq & Afghanistan & everything in between — & it’s doing good work — drawing on the personal experiences & perspectives of its members to raise public awareness about the true costs & consequences of militarism & war, and seeking peaceful, effective alternatives.

Here’s a closer look at him.

You can see him for yourself at Side Street Espresso at 412 G Street in downtown Anchorage, phone (907) 258-9055. Side Street is open Monday through Saturday from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM.

He’s so beautiful — if I could afford him, & had the space, I would bring him home myself. But at least I have this orange round-bellied little guy, who I picked up in the antique shop below my apartment when I lived in Seattle in the late ’80s. (I bought the oranges & cinnamon & beads considerably later.)

I was pretty tired this morning because I’d stayed up quite late, so I didn’t get much writing done today. Nor, I’m afraid, did Barbara — because I was gabbing away pretty heavily. About all kinds of stuff. I was tired, but I felt good, and the Vietnamese Buddha made me feel all the better, because the peace & balance within him was so demonstrative of the thing I was thinking about most as I talked, about Job — yeah, that one, the guy in the Bible — & his integrity— the integrity that he held onto all through the storm of his hurts, & the accusations of his “comforters” who repeatedly insisted that all the harms that had befallen him & his children were because of some sin they were sure he must have committed—but he hadn’t. He hung onto his integrity like someone holding onto a pole in the midst of a great storm, & ultimately the Voice from the Whirlwind vindicated him.

I look at the Vietnamese Buddha, sitting stately & serene & upright, & I think, were he beset by his own storms, that balance & integrity & inner peace would see him through, too.

Though the storm would probably mess up his clothes & his hair, at least if they weren’t made out of grey-white marble.

Well, Job’s been an important figure to me for a long time. I’ve got a couple of poems based on him, one of which — “Sermon” — I’ve posted here. I’ll have to find the other. Maybe some of the other stuff I’ve written about him too.

[Update 1/9/10: I've now posted the other poem, "Job 42.13."]

It has been a good day, despite my not getting as much sleep as I should, & despite it being quite cold — hovering around 0 degrees Fahrenheit today (-17 Celsius), depending on what part of town you’re in. This sweet little puppy tied up outside one of the shops on G Street near Side Street was shivering some in spite of its fur —

– but I was dressed well for the weather, & enjoyed my walk along 36th Avenue & C Street after I got done with my bank errand down on 36th (I took a bus there after Side Street). It was beautiful out. Here’s the pictures to prove it.

Besides, I was on my way to Barnes & Noble.

I wisely bypassed all the 30%-off copies of Palinocchio’s book of lies & got some books on Tibet & Nepal. Research, don’tcha know — environments with low atmospheric pressure (compared to sea level) are what I need to know about for the story I’m working on right now, which is called “Breathe,” & is about Pina Chomko, the first person in 3 centuries in the Project of which she is part to breathe the free, if thin, air of a planet. Cool stuff. Or rather, Cold stuff.

Then I came home and rowed for the first time since last May, lazy butt that I’ve been. Rowed 50K. Erg.

Feel great.

Related posts:

1. Side Street Mel
2. Side Street’s George Gee
3. I won’t abandon my integrity, even if you abandon me