OF DONKEYS AND HUMANS

I see Jack through the window resting on the hay he has been eating this morning. He is in a quiet mind meditation, ears up, soaking warm sunlight in air a degree or two below freezing. Just before I wrote this first sentence I thanked God for the donkeys, realizing I actually do treat them and talk to them as gifts from God. Jack is standing up now. The sunlight has warmed him like sitting by the fire. His dinger is hanging down. He's sunning it too. Jenny stepped around behind him to the place she drops her biscuits beside where Jack is standing. Now she's back to grazing her morning hay. I put the hay down for them separately. Jenny is always first. Jack has learned of his lifetime mate that she will be first. It's cool with Jack. After a year and a few months together, he steps aside and lets her have her way. She will anyway, he knows well. Jack stands on his hay grazing. Jenny walked out to the dogwood tree to rub her neck in the tree's fork. It's a good place for them to rub and get out of the sun in summer. I have trepidation they will rub the bark down so far they kill the tree, because it's so handy for them. If it dies, I'll leave it in place for them to rub on as long as the wood holds, several years. A branch of a small maple broke in a wind storm and leaned over to the ground. The branch is still connected to the tree. I don't have a chainsaw now, so I leave it for the donkeys. They are chewing the bark off the branches that hang down to the ground. Along the fence runs a row of multi-flora, an invasive thorny shrub with some of the last flowers in existence to actually have a scent as radiant as a gardenia's. When they're in flower you smell them walking by. A long row of them took up along the fence after the road was paved. The donkeys like them. They start chewing when the first shoots of green begin. By fall, they're chewed clean all the way back to the fence. Jack walked over to be where Jenny was. They both walked back to the hay, both grazing the same spread. It's only at the beginning I have to feed them separately. Bellies full, they graze together.

Several hours later, after a nap, fetching some water and a shower, I look out the window at the full moon rising above the trees. The donkeys are resting in their den. All is quiet in the donkey meadow swallowed up by the dark, the unknown, the place owls know. The woods are alive now with roaming inhabitants. The humans are asleep, the four-leggeds move about freely, graze where they will, do their own hunting, explore, live their family lives teaching their babies to avoid humans. All the wild animals in the forest are not near as dangerous as one human. The windows are black. And out in what I perceive to be black, the four-leggeds live openly like we humans live during the day. The field-camera images I've seen from a short distance into the trees show an active life in the night, deer, fox, coyote, bear. Big cats pass through here, too, though fail to have their pictures taken for lack of interest in apples and corn. The four-leggeds walk about in silence. An image came to mind of a time many years ago walking with a friend through forest the other side of the Parkway, going to see a couple of waterfalls an hour an a half walk in, downhill, and two hours walking out, uphill. Whatever the case or the situation, he's the superior one. I learned to let it flow like Jack lets Jenny be first, she needs it so much and he doesn't need it at all. I like to step on sticks, make them go snap, let the snakes all around know humans are coming through, run for it. I want all the animals in the forest to know I'm out for a walk. They will see me first and move on out of sight. I don't want to walk up on a bobcat stalking a rabbit. Or anything. Friend thinks it's gross of me to step on sticks. I was lectured that he walks in silence like the Indians, not like a stupid white man. I said, I was not blessed to be born Indian this lifetime. I'm not hunting. I'm a white man tourista. I was so tired of his superior mouth I wanted to shut him down. Change the subject. I don't give a shit. I can step between the branches too, but when I'm deep in the forest, I'm not at home, I don't know the rules, don't know any of it. I want snakes to see me and move out of the way before I see them. Anyway, that's my reasoning. My rule number one: do not step on a snake.

Earlier today I was thinking about giving him a call and suggesting lunch one day this week or next. Then thought, Why? Didn't have an answer. It was about three years ago he got on my last nerve and disrespected me the last time. I said to self then, I have control; I have a choice to be around him or not. I choose not to, I live in peace. I know in advance I will kick myself in the ass all the way home telling self, You knew better. What does it take for you to get it? I stop self in advance. I know the rules: keep quiet, he talks. I speak past a few phrases, I am interrupted and he takes off on something more important. I saw him a moment last summer, a reminder that I really don't give a shit. For example, he believes mountain people are ignorant. They're not as politically astute as he, have different opinions from his; therefore, they're not worth knowing. He's of the PC mind, you agree with him or you're out. I'm out. And intend to stay out. Don't care about being nice anymore. I'd so much rather Vada show me her new toys. I'd rather listen to Marsha talk about horses. I find women much more enjoyable to know than men, I've learned in my adult life to see women are so much more intelligent than men it can't be measured. The women know it. The men are too preoccupied with their dicks to notice much of anything else. Brings to mind another man I know. He wears me out with is concern about my dick. Every time I see him, Gettin any pussy lately? Every time, I decide next time I'm going to call him on his interest in my dick, though never do, like it's none of his business. I'm not asking about his. He has three subjects, pussy, liquor and niggers. And he's older than me. Most other men I know have three subjects, pussy, beer and guns. I'd rather listen to somebody talk about a new hunting rifle he bought with a certain kind of scope, how far it will shoot and whatever else, than hear somebody go on about wanting other people to think like him. I want to say something like I've learned to allow others themselves, and consequently live in peace. But it sounds too much like playing the superior game, one upmanship, when I don't want to play any game. Can't we just talk? Does it always have to be a psychological test of superiority?

The human mind is so complex, it's refreshing to be around the animals missing the forebrain. The donkeys don't worry about calendars, schedules, time, value, They do, however, take exception to disrespect. I don't ever disrespect the donkeys and they don't disrespect me. I like knowing that a donkey can kill me easily inside five seconds if it takes a notion. They can also be my dearest friends and protectors. It's all in how I treat them. I treat them as my friends, they treat me as friend. Sometimes walking hay out into the meadow, Jack will walk beside me and push me sideways, pushing me off the trail I'm walking. A few days ago he pushed me and kept on until I had to walk around him. Jack laughed. He has taken to liking me to rub my chin hair on his nose. It tickles him, He curls his upper lip like he does after sniffing one of Jenny's fresh steaming biscuits. My chin hair fascinates both donkeys. Both have taken hold of it with their lips to get a sense for what it is. The human has hair on his face too. Jack has become comic at grain time in the afternoon. Jack loves the grain so much he squeals and groans. Jenny will have it first, though Jack wants it so much he goes for it anyway. Jenny grunts at him, pushing him away from it with her nose. Jack grunts and whines, backs away from Jenny. I walk along the other side of the fence saying, C'mon Jack, and he follows with his nose at the fence smelling the container I carry the grain in. I put it down for him and he's eating before it's finished pouring. He doesn't care. I don't even think about carrying the grain container out into the meadow for them. They'd be tussling at each other with me in the middle as soon as I stepped inside the gate. I give it to them over the fence. They get so excited, both want to be first, and both want it now, they lose sense that I am not as stout as they are. And eight donkey hooves stomping around my feet is not a secure feeling. It's not that they scare me. I get out of their way fast as I can go. I know they don't want to hurt me. The worst that could happen would be to get knocked down. That wouldn't hurt anything. They'd stop their antics seeing me on the ground. They'd both look away repentant. I'd laugh and say that was a good donkey trick.

photos by tj worthington

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YES TO DIVERSITY

helen frankenthaler

A few minutes ago I found the saying from Madeleine Albright concerning women, about a special hell for women who don't help other women. I grew up in the generation before women's liberation. I've enjoyed in my lifetime seeing the liberation of women. Government lets women down every step of the way, but outside the reach of government, out here in the world where we live, I've seen a change sweep through women's culture in the younger generations and it took with the older women too. It is a new self-confidence. In childhood I remember thinking a lot of the women that lived in the neighborhood were really neat people, who turned inward to be a housewife to raise kids and stay married, clean house and cook. I see women now asserting themselves creatively in each one's own way. I see women having girl's night out parties. I see women being friends and not slicing each other to ribbons behind one another's backs. Of course, it goes on. It goes on among men too. It's a human thang. No blame. All the way through school I knew a lot of brilliant girls I felt needed a chance to be their human self and deserved the chance the same as men. I never found girls and women less intelligent than boys and men. Our society needs the influence of the feminine in a bad way. And the feminine is coming in. Joan Jett opened the door to women as rock stars. Then there was Heart, then Patti Smith and Nina Hagen, then L7, Courtney Love and the whole spectrum of rock women are doing now. It's not been so much a "movement" as a shift in belief systems in how women see themselves in relation to their own humanity.  

helen frankenthaler

This word humanity doesn't have the meaning it one time had, either. Or maybe I had a youthful stereotype of humanity from nineteenth century salons. I am not disheartened by humanity seeing the greedy doing what they do, seeing what power does to people who have had a taste of it. We do it all, have done it all, always. It's in us each one, individually. Some of us learn to control our automatic desires, and most watch tv learning daily to satisfy desires whatever the cost. Learning to control the automatic desires is the spiritual path I focus on for myself. I don't believe I have a right to hold anyone else to such attention. Meaningful to me does not mean necessarily meaningful for someone else. Like I can read Wallace Stevens' Idea of Order At Key West and have my mind blown every time. Somebody else would say, It's all right. And somebody else wouldn't be able to make heads nor tails of it. And somebody else would tell me I only see it superficially and maybe give me an in-depth lecture on what's really going on with it. And I'd listen with full attention. I feel like this is a benefit of being a reader in a world of people who don't read. You learn definitively that not everybody is interested in the same thing you are. A good learning. Somebody else is interested in making fiddles. It makes an interesting world that we all have our own likes and dislikes. One does not cancel another. All the different interests weave together into humanity. I'm all for a world that allows everyone their own potential at something besides making money. That too, for the people that need it, but not to have it a necessity for everybody. I have a feeling this is the world we are moving toward in our social evolution as humanity. 

helen frankenthaler

We're in a white man backlash now that the people with black hair and women are becoming self-aware. It's unsettling the white man belief system that has been dominant for 6,000 years. We are seeing the tail end of that era and men are freaking out. Their support systems have abandoned them. Hate radio and hate television rub salt in the white man's wound. I tend to see that a good thing, considering wars are about burning off hate. This hate spewing up among white men has been there all long. It's not new because of Limbaugh. The hate created Limbaugh. The hate has to come to the surface where it can be dealt with. I see these trends among the people, not in government. Government being a white man mafia, government will change last, if religion doesn't come in last. I see us moving toward that overused word diversity. I'm glad it's going that way. I found girls smarter than the guys all the way through school. In adult life, I find women, as a rule of thumb, to be far more intelligent than men. Earlier today driving to town, I heard on NPR somebody had made a study that found women are far better workers than men, concluding women deserve more pay than men. It accorded with what I've observed in my experience along the way. I felt it was a shame when Lois Sheets lost the election some years ago running for sheriff. She would have been a good one, and there would not have been any scandals. Donna Shumate, lawyer in Sparta, is among the most brilliant minds I know. Not saying I'm a collector of brilliant minds, but one stands out from time to time. I worked for Donna for six years and came out of the experience respecting her more than I did going into it, and my respect was considerable then. Men don't have to perform in court pregnant. There are some men I know whose minds I respect, but it's mostly in women I find the minds I respect in the deepest way. I don't mean to be going off into generalizations, but can't help it. 

helen frankenthaler

All my life, from childhood to now, I have observed women to be so much more intelligent than men that the difference is remarkable. American boys tradition has been all the way along to stop learning after puberty. Boys are not taught to be sensitive to the feminine, only to conquer. Rape goes so deep in the male psyche, it's good to see rape coming to the surface as a social concern, where it can be dealt with--more evidence white man is losing the reins of power. The ERA not passing failed to slow down the women's movement. Its time was now, whether government noticed or not. Evidently, now is the time for gay rights to surface. It's one of those things I say, Why hasn't it always been thus? It's as self-evident as women deserving at least equal pay with men, as well as equal opportunity. It's something I don't feel is political. I knew black people all the way through school. I did not find them ignorant. I found them intimidated. Girls had to ditch their intelligence when they started wanting to get married. The black kids knew that doing well in school wasn't going to serve them in any kind of way. They were taken for dumb, came to see themselves dumb, and gave up before they could start. I remember a guy in high school. His name was Leon. We were the same weight and had to wrestle in gym class. He always smelled of liquor. Always wanted me to win because he didn't really want to bother. He kept a pint bottle in his locker. He was a good guy, intelligent guy, didn't do shit in school, didn't finish, and I'd guess either crashed and burned or went into the Army or anything except upwardly mobile. He knew as a black man he had no chance but to be a low-paid laborer, working for the man, would never have any respect outside the bar, never honored for being a man. It rendered him without hope from the beginning. I did not feel right being white around him. I didn't want to hold him down, render him without a chance. I didn't want him thinking I was his superior because my skin was white. This at the time in a teenager's mind when the injustices of the world we're on the verge of diving into loom large.   

helen frankenthaler herself

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MEN AND OPINIONS

ellsworth Kelly

I woke this morning entertaining the question of how many centuries it will take for men to heal from several millennia of the male role being about war, killing and being killed. I've always disliked the song Onward Christian Soldiers. Marching as to war does not define the spiritual path for me. Yesterday I saw in some brief video an image of soldiers marching in a parade. Such images disturb me deeply. It tells a belief system I don't believe, can't believe, won't believe, and really don't like being subject to. I especially don't like our time now when our corporate government attacks poverty stricken, defenseless countries for the profits of oil corporations, jet fuel, ship fuel, automobile fuel, keeping the stock market going, then loses the war against people with no allies, using weapons taken from dead American soldiers. It's shameless, but it's how police state functions. The prophesy for our time has been fulfilled like a checklist up to the big war that will make survivors round the globe set the determination to be done with war. That's the day I have waited for all my life. I dread the war that gets us there, but like it's said, All's well that ends well. Maybe. I'm not so sure about that, but it sounds good. Its like saying the end justifies the means. Not necessarily. I take them both for self-serving self-justification. All these old bullshit beliefs about the glory of killing and the glory of being killed will fade into history with nationalism and patriarchy. I celebrate it because it's not far away. It doesn't mean the solution to all problems, but it's a solution to a major problem that creates millions of other problems in its wake.

 

 

alex katz

 

I project that men will heal from a culture of obedience training for men. I ask myself what is the problem with men up in years. It seems like their brains atrophy and they go nuts. But I don't think that's it. From childhood, a boy's mind is atrophied. Little man gotta grow up and be a big man, carry a gun, shoot people, get drunk on power over women and children, define any sensitivity to others feminine, thus unworthy of consideration. In the masculine mind as it has evolved unto today, the feminine is outside consideration, not a concern, stupid because women don't know nothin. Art comes under the feminine. It means paying attention to something besides the crosshairs. Shutting off the feminine ultimately shuts down feeling in oneself. In the soul, we have both, or neither, depending on how you want to look at it. To shut down the validity of half of one's self is ignorant to start with, dumb as hell to carry on and just plain stupid to live with. A man gets up toward 70 and a lifetime of believing in obedience over conscience makes an ideologue of the negative mind; hence, Faux News. I've had to tell a few of my friends over time, Rush Limbaugh is not information. Growing up in a world of boys becoming men, I learned at a certain point, late teens, that it is important to have opinions. I tried it. I've finally come to see that opinions are the same as nothing. Someone who used to be a friend made me so tired of his own opinions being fact and everyone else's opinions nonsense, that I called him one day on his superior attitude, which I'd learned many years before was a defensive mask. He turned, walked away and has had nothing to do with me since. I mentally pumped a fist in the air and said, Yes! It's been over two years and I've not missed him a minute of that time.

 

robert indiana

 

We were both of anti-war mind. I went to the 1968 march on Washington over Viet Nam, like it mattered. The next day I learned it did not matter. That event was the beginning and end of my involvement in anything political. He went to U of Tennessee and was involved in demonstrations there, his moment of glory placing a flower in a National Guardman's rifle barrel. I remembered seeing on the front page of the newspaper in that time a photo of a guy at U Tenn with the same color hair putting a flower in a rifle barrel during a demonstration. I've often wondered if that had been him ten years before I knew him. My figuring is it was the hip, cool thing to do and hundreds of flowers were put in rifle barrels. Hippies thought flowers were so cool. They are, but not used politically. His self definition is, "I'm a revolutionary." It was another moment in life of controlling my face so laughing my ass off inside doesn't show. Our "friendship" was much like the friendship between van Gogh and Gauguin. Watching the film, Lust For Life, with Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn, directed by Vincent Minnelli, 1956, I found van Gogh's issues with Gauguin's arrogance very much the same as mine with friend. His two songs are: Anything you can do I can do better, and Whatever it is I'm against it. I laughed seeing the relationship between van Gogh and Gauguin so familiar it was like a reenactment our story. His opinions of himself are quite out of line with what the people around him observe. As one who never learned to trust opinions, my experience knowing him so many years has trained me to give no value to any opinion. It doesn't mean I don't have opinions aplenty. It means I don't value them. I write opinions here, and I speak opinions talking with friends, but I don't believe them, don't hold them dear as Mine.

 

rufino tamayo

 

Isn't it curious: Mine as possessive, ownership, connected to self, and mine, a deep dark shaft with tunnels under the ground. I'm wondering if the cold dark mine makes an image to define the possessive mine. Among the first things we teach babies is "mine" and the next thing is "share." Does this mean I need a miner's lantern to go into what I mean when I say mine. I see a cd case for Santana I call mine, because I paid for it and I possess it. Is it that the idea of ownership mine could be a root system into my own psychic interior made of dark tunnels? I'm thinking that since they are the same word, there must be some connection. It's awfully easy to make a connection, which makes me suspect I'm bullshitting myself. However, I look at possessive mine the way a baby uses it, holding the blanket close to her heart, "Mine." Those roots go straight to the heart, encase it like a net. Then we grow up into the world of everybody having opinions, and the opinions I hold dear to my heart I call mine. A network of root-like shafts around my heart like a net around a glass ball. Much of our language comes from pre-logical times. whoever called a deep hole in the ground a mine might have seen inside self a deep dark place where memories of experience lurk. Yet, in other languages the words are not the same. For me, that settles it. I'll take it for two different approaches to the word as two separate words for reasons to be found in the evolution of language. Somebody can answer that question easily, like somebody can answer where the lightning comes from. Just a passing curiosity around the nature of the ego, which looks awfully much like a net around the heart.  

 

 

tony smith

 

 

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RAPE CULTURE IN AMERICA

isamu noguchi

 

One of the biggest surprises of my life, which really isn't a surprise at all, is seeing the extent of male contempt for women. It seems like it is even more pervasive than racism, in every race. The right wing launch of all-out racism in reaction to an elected President, who happens to be black, is equally obsessed with devaluing women. I'm actually glad to see this fountain of racism that reacted itself to the surface over Obama by way of hate radio and television. The civil rights era never really addressed racism. It was about legal rights for black people like for white people. Racism  was the R-word at the time. It was the word everybody was so tired of hearing and it always popped up, "That's racism!" How did we know you'd say that? A man I once knew, who is long on the other side, watched tv news every day of his adult life with a drink before dinner. Several years ago a new book was published on the civil rights era that was getting attention for being a good read. I gave it to him. When he finished it, he said, "I didn't know any of this happened." Knocked me off my track. I didn't feel like I wanted to read it because I remembered so much of the news from the time and much writing around the issue. All the photographs were familiar. And I know he watched the news more than I did. I didn't even question why he didn't know about any of it. Uninterested. Black people come up on the evening news and mind shifts to someplace else like when a commercial comes on. He also couldn't listen to female talking heads on the news. The female voice was devoid of authority for him, like there couldn't be any knowledge behind it.

 

isamu noguchi

 

The republican right wing white man party has been obsessively making so many laws against a woman's right to be a human being, it's overwhelming to me that the white men of our government hate women so much. Do they really represent the rest of us men? We need studies to prove that rape is epidemic in our time, when it's so obvious, who could question it? Heard on an NPR interview show today, it might have been Diane Rehm, a woman saying seven percent of college boys admit to having raped, and of them two-thirds were serial rapists. Seven percent is seven per hundred. A school with 20,000 students has 700 rapists. Considering the very large number of colleges and universities in the country, rape is a serious problem. Law enforcement says she asked for it, she shouldn'a wore that dress that showed her figure. In a world of people dictated by television an unshapely woman is a pig. Again, male dominated networks and belief system based in advertising where a female figure is a predictable attraction. We have an entire nation where seven percent of the boys are rapists. No telling how many men over 20 are rapists. It's a bigger number than the college boys. The women know, but they can't talk, because in  America when it's a white boy, he was seduced into it. Blame the victim. She got him drunk. If he's black, string him up. Keep white girls safe for white rapists. I was driving back from town today hearing a woman whose name I don't remember talking about this problem and my jaw dropped to the metaphorical floor when she mentioned the seven percent statistic. Seven doesn't sound like much of a percentage, but multiply it by all the schools in the land and rape is a national epidemic not being addressed. This is an expression of collective male fear of women that is masked as contempt. Of course, it's not all men. I'm dwelling on the seven percent, not the other 93. Why don't the 93 say to the 7, cut it out, asshole? Indifference.

 

isamu noguchi

 

I heard another statistic later in the day that increasing numbers every year of women are not getting married. I saw a cartoon on the subject: Why buy the pig when all you need is a little sausage? Since I've become aware of the serious social problem of the male fear of women, it makes me question my colleagues in gender all the more. I came from the world of that mind, white man mind, grew up in it, learned it, unconsciously lived by it in the early years. Not rape mind, but fear of women mind. Rape is an expression of fear of women, same as sex play with children. An awful lot of us grow up in families where daddy talks down to mommy, where grandpa talks down to grandma, and the women have no recourse. I've thought about the question of next lifetime, how would I like to have a female experience next time? No way! I thought of what women go through subject to men, especially the intelligent woman married to an ignorant man who rules her with his ignorance and she has to learn with her intelligence how to live with it and not dry up into ashes. I'm not proud of being male. White man has made a fool of himself for an awful number of centuries. I grew up among boys as one of them, learned the culture as one of them. I was not one of the boys that believed dying for my country was honorable. I thought it was just dead. I wanted to live my life, not be killing other guys my age deluded into believing for rich white men who cared nothing about me or them.  Why should I care enough about them to die for them? They wouldn't die for me. Didn't have a choice. The draft made the decision for me. Authoritarians just have to look at me to know I am the enemy. I tend not to give authoritarians my power. They hate it. I go about my way.

isamu noguchi

In my lifetime in a world that is half men and half women, I have found the more intelligent people I know are women. The men are way down the scale in relation to the women. Another epidemic in our time is young women with one, two or three kids, divorced from a guy who needed anger management training and never got it, living in HUD housing, working a full time job for minimum wage, taking night classes at the community college, kids in daycare, and at home has to turn them over to the television. How many men can do that? Working class women all over the country are living in this situation, a large number of them. They get taken advantage of by landlords, mechanics, employers. The ex husband works, lives in a trailer unable to take care of himself in any way, drinks himself to sleep in front of the tv at night, and pays a great chunk of his pay in child support. It's hard enough for them to give up so much of their pay they have nothing left over, but the guy couldn't take care of kids, nurture them, give them affection, and live in poverty working all the time too. It's difficult both ways. The girls in this situation with kids our Christian society wants to throw out with the trash. Believe it or not, the American way is and always has been to hate the poor. It hasn't been until the last several years that I've seen the white reactionary male politician, cloaked in Bible, so dead set on denying women basic human rights. I did not see that coming. I've come to believe collective misogyny was under the carpet of denial with racism, needed bringing out in the open, and now is that time. I see a consciousness waking up in women all over the country now. It's been going on for awhile, since the Seventies. I've been reeling from these rape statistics I heard this morning, seeing the sorry state of the American male consciousness. It makes me ashamed.

isamu noguchi

 

 

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