Animal Dreams

My dreams often contain nothing of substance--no concrete symbols or colors on which I can build a translation using traditional dream interpretation. So I was surprised and amused to have two vivid dreams full of animals the other night.

It was Friday night, after the second presidential debate. The first dream showed someone bringing a handful of army ants to the next presidential debate, in Arizona. The army ants swiftly multiplied and began to swarm over one of the men attending the debate. In the process of saving that man's life from the ants, John Kerry fell into the horde of ants. Within moments he was dead, all his flesh stripped from him, nothing left but a pile of bones. I was horrified, crying, in despair at his death so soon before the election. "We don't have enough time to choose another candidate!" I wept. (Guess I forgot about Edwards.)

The second dream was more bizarre. I was back in Oregon, idly wandering in the abandoned orchard in front of my parents' house. Looking down the road, I saw an animal loping toward me. At first I thought it was a large dog, and slowly climbed back over the fence into the field next to the house as a precaution. When it was closer I realized that it was not a dog. Instead it was a donkey, carrying a monkey on its back.

When they reached the orchard, they turned and came toward me. The donkey repeatedly thrust its head between two of the fence's wire strands and pushed against the fence, trying to get through. I backed away a little, leery of its aggression. Then the monkey spoke to me.

"We've been blown off course because of the hurricanes," said the monkey. "Can you help us out?"

"I'm sorry, I don't think I can," I answered. I wanted to help, but honestly didn't feel capable.

Fortunately for the lost animals, a group of Native Americans came out of the house and offered to help them. They all sat down in a circle with the donkey and the monkey and began to speak with them. I went inside the house and watched through a window, trying to observe and learn without being intrusive.

I don't think I've ever dreamt of a talking animal before, and I'm not sure what to make of either dream. Obviously I'm afraid something will be done to sabotage John Kerry's chances of being elected President. I don't know much about army ants, and suspect that their appearance owes itself to my vague memory of a short story I read in high school, "Leiningen Versus the Ants." The donkey being the symbol of the Democratic party would seem to be relevant, but I don't know what the "monkey on its back" would be. Or how it got blown off course by the hurricanes.

So, hey, if you see any ants swarming ominously in Arizona tomorrow, warn John Kerry, wouldja?

"But I Want an Oompah-Loompah Now, Daddy!"

My husband and I recently took a long weekend to go visit my family for the first time since out wedding. We took our pictures to show everyone and spent every day visiting with a different configuration of relatives.

We had dinner at my parents' house one evening with my parents, my aunt and uncle, and my grandparents. After dinner my aunt and uncle and I were sitting in the living room, looking at pictures and reading magazines between snippets of conversation. Very relaxed and comfy. I flipped through a National Geographic magazine lying on the table next to me. It was the September 2004 issue, with many articles focusing on the effects of global climate change.

I made a comment about the article I was reading. My aunt, a very conservative evangelical Christian, breezily replied, "Oh, well, I know the Lord's going to be coming back for us before too long anyway, so I'm not worried about it."

I really wish some Christian who holds that attitude could explain to me how they think it is consonant with the teaching of the man who warned, "If you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?"* Don't you believe that humanity is to be a steward the earth, to care for it and nurture it not as a toy to use up and toss aside, but as a gift to be cared for and entrusted to God's other children when you are gone?

My aunt doesn't worry about that responsibility, because she feels certain that she's got a "get out of jail free" card--the Rapture! Hey, Jesus is going to come back any day now, and that means she doesn't have to worry about having a good earth to pass on to the next generation! It never occurs to her that for two thousand years Christians have been expecting "the End," and every other generation has been mistaken in their guesses about its timing. She refuses to consider that she also might be wrong, that there might be another generation, or ten, or a hundred, before her Jesus returns with a shiny new earth to play with.

Oh, Christian, explain this to me. Don't you talk a lot about family values and discipline, about responsibility and commitment? I hear a lot of Christians talk about the inadvisability of "handouts;" I hear them warn that people who get things for free tend to take those things for granted and misuse them. But then those Christians turn around and say, without a trace of irony, that it doesn't matter if species are going extinct, the ocean and the air becoming increasingly polluted and the earth struggling, "'cause we're gonna get a new earth any day now, just as soon as Jesus comes back! Hallelujah!"

Explain to me how you can say this without feeling like a greedy, spoiled child?

*Matthew 16:11-12

Echidne's Song of the Earth

Echidne of the Snakes has written a poignant, lyrical song, "To the Dead Children." I can't even skim over it without my eyes filling with tears. And now I find that I can't write about it, either. This...this is beautiful beyond beautiful. It drains my fury and hatred and fills the emptiness with yearning and grief deeper than language, sorrow and yet a strange, rough kind of solace.

Thanks, Echidne.

This is the song of the earth to all the children who have died in wars and acts of terrorism, or maybe a faint echo of it:

These are my children, the dead ones, the beloved: the ones covered in mud and dirt, the bloodied ones, the limbless ones, the ones who were scattered by bombs like crumbs thrown for the birds. These are my children: the burned ones, the raped ones, the starved ones, the buried ones. See how beautiful they all are, my beloved children.

I seek for them everywhere, I call for them and at nightfall I find them. I gather them to me and give them sleep. The night I turn into a silken shawl, the sky into a blue blanket. I weave cradles and nests out of my hair, and I find a place for each one of my children, however hurt and frightened.

My lap is wide enough for all of them and their pain, and I give them dreams of pine forests, of fresh streams in sunlight, of young foxes gambolling in a clearing. I give them dreams of peace and quiet, of stars and sailboats, of flowers and meadows. I give them dreams of snow and sun and sweetness. I give them what was taken away from them and when I cannot do that I give them oblivion and rest. And the wind sings a lullaby, gently, in all my tongues.

It is my milk that feeds all, and my tears that sate all thirst, and these children, my beloved, will never lack food or drink or a place to slumber in my lap or a peace that cannot be broken..

That Great Smile

I can't resist leaving the adorable smile of Thomas Voeckler up as the most recent post for a bit.

Photo from velonews.com.

I Love Thomas Voeckler.

My new boyfriend, Thomas Voeckler.

My fiance introduced me to the Tour de France last summer. I didn't know anything about professional bike racing, and still don't know much, but it's an impressive event. Over a hundred guys riding their bikes for hours on end every day for three weeks, through the Pyrenees and the Alps....it amazes me.

So it's becoming an annual tradition for us to get up early in the morning for those three weeks and watch the live coverage of the Tour de France before I leave for work. In fact, we're getting married on the final day of the 2004 Tour de France. Maybe we'll be able to say, in years to come, that we were married on the very day that Lance Armstrong won a record sixth consecutive Tour? We shall see...

Anyway, this year we've both been enthralled, together with the rest of the fans, by Mr. Thomas Voeckler, an adorable 25-year-old French rider who took the lead in the race 12 days ago and managed to hang onto it right up until Lance Armstrong took the lead today. It's only Voeckler's second time riding in the Tour, making his achievement even more impressive. And in addition to the determination and strength that won him those 11 yellow race-leader jerseys, he has the cutest smile I've seen out there this year. Check out those pictures! Every time they put the yellow jersey on him at the end of the day, he'd give this shy little smile that just made me want to peel that jersey right back off of him.

Haha! Just kidding, sweetie, I can't wait to get married to you this Saturday! Mwah!

Seriously, Thomas, you call me if you're ever in Seattle. Swoon.

Independence Day

We sang the hymn "This is my Song" today to close the service at the tiny church I attend. It was written by Lloyd Stone during the interval between WWI and WWII. I found myself weeping as we sang it, and I can't think of a more beautiful or true song to sing on this day.

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
But other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

Music "Finlandia" by Jean Sibelius, words by Lloyd Stone.

For a beautifully contemplative page combining the words and music of this hymn with some breathtaking pictures from around the world, visit this page at the St. Aidan's Episcopal Church website.

Treasure Hunting

Last week Mr. Thel and I were given a gift certificate to REI from a group of amazing people that I work with. (The calm, helpful staff on Bloody Thursday are all completely real, and some of the nicest people I've ever known.) We were really excited, but decided to wait until after the wedding before deciding what to buy with the gift certificate.

Yeah, that determination lasted about 36 hours. Saturday morning Mr. Thel said, "Wanna go to REI?" and off we went.

We bought a couple of useful things, things we actually needed for our upcoming trip to Glacier National Park. New jacket, sunglasses. And then we drifted into the more frivolous sections of the store, looking at stuff we totally didn't need. Stuff we never would have looked at twice if it weren't for this nice little gift certificate burning a hole in our pocket...

We probably would have held out, you know, if it weren't for the week-long sale they've got going on. As it was, the sale price on one little Global Positioning System unit was too tempting to resist. For almost a year Mr. Thel has been looking at them online, gazing longingly into the GPS case every time we went to any sporting or camping goods store. So we got one on sale on Saturday, thanks to the generosity of my work friends.

And then we went geocaching. Do you know about geocaching? Neither did I. It's just treasure hunting for grownups, apparently. As geocaching.com puts it, "The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches."

It sounds deceptively easy. We had found a couple of caches last year without a GPS unit, by looking at the maps available at the geocaching website. But we took our new toy to Discovery Park on Sunday and found out just how challenging it can be. Having been to Discovery Park countless times, we had picked two caches within the park to find. (Oh yes, there is a geocache hidden closer than you think. They are all around you.)

It was so much more fun than I had expected. After we entered the coordinates of the cache, the GPS displayed the distance and direction to it. I got ridiculously excited to watch the distance diminish as we neared the cache, especially when the display flashed "You are within 100 feet of landmark!" 60 feet...45 feet...30 feet...whoops, 50 feet, turn south... We got lucky on the first one, finding it wasn't far from my very favorite spot in the park. Still, it was down a little side trail I'd never trod before, and we were tickled to find two small metal bug sculptures in a secluded spot back in the woods near the cache.

Alas, our beginners' luck was not to hold. We headed down the trail that we estimated would lead toward the next cache. It looked like it would be down at the North Beach, and sure enough, the GPS did its cheerful countdown as we strode down the beach--right up until the "go this way" arrow swung around and pointed straight into the cliff. Sixty feet that way, but a hundred feet above us. We climbed back up the trail and headed back in the right direction, determined to find this cache too. We found the right trail to the bluff's edge easily enough. Unfortunately, just as we got within 100 feet of it again, a wedding party streamed out of the cultural center next to the bluff, heading straight at us to pose for pictures in front of the view. We figured they probably didn't want two sweaty hikers poking around in the background of their wedding pictures and slunk away, defeated.

It was so much fun, though, for someone like me who used to make up her own elaborate treasure maps, or sketch actual maps of our property. When Mr. Thel first described this hobby I thought it was a kind of race, that someone would hide a cool prize and post its location, and the first people to find it would get to keep it. I pictured people hovering in front of their computers, waiting eagerly for a new prize location to be posted, then rushing out to try to claim it.

But of course, the point wasn't the cheesy little prizes in the box at the end. It's all about paying attention to the direction your trail is heading. It's about looking hard at the scenery around you and adjusting your route when you find you're off course. It's about chuckling over the mystery with other seekers, and getting that little bubble of glee when you know you're on the right track.

It's all about the journey. And that, I like.

Childhood detritus

I naturally tend to be a bit of a packrat. When I was a little girl my closet had a built-in dresser, and the bottom drawer was left empty because it didn't have a handle and was difficult to open. I discovered this empty space and squirreled away the weirdest things in there. I brought home flannel-board figures from Sunday School, pretty rocks and shells from the beach, and sheets of paper I'd carefully covered in scribbles and drawings, tucking them all carefully into my "hidden" drawer.

The weirdest thing I kept in the drawer? Well, my mom had really long hair, and after she brushed it she would clean out her hairbrush, roll the hair up into a neat ball between her palms, and throw it away. I was fascinated by these hairballs. Obsessed with all kinds of miniature things, soon I discovered that I could shape the hairballs into tiny hair nests. I imagined that a delicate bird had shaped a hollow for her eggs inside them. And, yes, I kept a couple of these pretty little nests of hair in a corner of the drawer.

After I left home, however, I ended up moving at least once a year for five or six years. This made me get a lot better about throwing things out. No more secret stashes of hairballs for me! I stopped keeping every little note and letter, mercilessly recycled clothing and shoes, and even frequently culled my bookshelves (by far the most painful part). Things with sentimental value stuck around longer, but after packing and unpacking something three or four times without using it for anything in between, I became ruthless. Yes, I know I got this from a dear friend, but our friendship won't suffer if I pass on this candle holder/necklace/picture frame.

Journals are a different story. I've been an obsessive journal-keeper since sixth grade, and I won't throw out a single one of the twenty journals I've filled. It's a little pathetic, but I justify that collection by pointing to the fact that my memory is atrocious.

But there's one thing I've kept through all those moves, and it's never going away. My sister and I had a small collection of dress-up clothes--mostly castoffs from our aunt and grandma, ridiculous dresses they hadn't worn in twenty years that we would bunch up over our t-shirts and jeans and sashay around feeling glamorous and grown-up. At some point our collection gained two fringed shawls: a black one and a glimmering silver one. My sister took the black one, but I fell in love with that silver shawl. I told myself stories about how it was woven from starlight and spun by moonlight, sprinkled with fairy dust and shimmering with magic. I was very strict about letting myself play with it, reserving it for extra-special storylines in which I needed a flash of mystery draped over my shoulders. Every time I whirled it around me, I thrilled to the cool secrets I imagined woven within it.

When I left home, I quietly dug the silver shawl out of the closet where all our stuffed animals, Barbies, and dress-up clothes had been banished over the years, and took away with me. It usually stayed in a drawer or a hatbox in a closet, always out of sight. I never wore it, but I never quite tossed it out in any of my anti-hoarding fits, either.

And then a few years ago I ran out of magic. I stopped looking up at the stars and couldn't bear to keep a journal. It was a very long stretch of drab monotony. God died, love lied, and I never wanted to get up in the morning.

I remember three things that happened around the same time a little color started to creep back into my world. I had utterly neglected my only houseplant. It was completely dead, I thought--nothing but dirt left in its container. I started hopefully watering it anyway, and after several weeks I was delighted to see tiny green leaves emerging from the soil.

I had a favorite bracelet with a broken clasp that had languished in my jewelry box through those months. One day I sat down and carefully fixed the clasp so I could wear the bracelet again.

And I pulled the shawl out of the drawer and draped it around a lampshade. Of course I knew it wasn't actually a magic shawl. It hadn't been able to make me invisible, or let me tame unicorns, or transform me into a stunning princess. But all the playful storylines had woven themselves into it over the years, and something of its fantasy still seemed to twinkle at me through its silvery threads.

I've moved a couple more times since then, always keeping the shawl draped somewhere prominent in my bedroom. For a while I had it arranged high in a corner, hanging so the light from my lamp sent lacy patterns onto the ceiling and walls. Usually it's just hung awkwardly around a lampshade, fringe swaying below the light.

If a fire broke out in our apartment, I would first scramble to grab as many journals as I could sensibly carry. I would rush to pull clothes from the closet and the box of important documents.

And then I honestly think I would snatch that shawl.

A Niece is Nice

Reason Numero Uno (and, so far, Numero Solo) why I want to be a Cool Aunt:


"Cool Aunt Thel" reads Winnie-the-Pooh with her niece.

Yeah, I want to be a Cool Aunt. I want to be the Cool Aunt who always picks out the perfect gift--I think I made a good start on that, as apparently every night at bedtime she insists on reading the book and listening to the cassette recording of Abiyoyo that I gave her for Christmas. (Yes, I did start my covert campaign to help make her a voracious reader before she turned two--why?) I want to be the Cool Aunt she can vent to if she feels the need when she hits adolescence and her parents (who are much cooler, in reality, than I could ever hope to be) seem unbearably dorky and embarrassing. You know--the Cool Aunt who won't freak out if she lets fly with a "damn" or a "shit."

Anyway, she's adorable. Hey, I'm not a parent, so I had to bust out a cool picture of my beautiful niece to brag about. ("Yeah, she's brilliant! Already loves books, and she's not quite two!")

Just one more reason to move to Alaska, really.

Granddad and the Gipper

(Well, now, I can't skulk through this week without some sort of reference to Reagan's death, can I?)

The first President whose tenure I can recall, Ronald Reagan was President of the U.S. from my earliest awareness through the middle of elementary school. Not that I had more than a fuzzy idea of U.S. government; I suppose I'd learned the basics of U.S. government by fourth grade (President, not King; elections, not tyranny) but I don't think I'd been taught much more than that during the Reagan years.

I do remember spending long summer days at Grandma and Granddad's house in 1987. I collected rocks from the dry creek bed, ate blackberries by the fistful, and watched the horses graze. I ran around tossing my head and pretending I was a horse, coaxing my younger sister and brother into pretending they were horses too. I didn't know beans from Contras.

But I remember Grandma making us come inside for lunch, fixing us snack trays and letting us sit in the living room to eat while Granddad watched the TV--a real treat for us, not having TV at home. I ate my bologna-and-cheese rolled on a toothpick and half-watched the man in the uniform who was on the TV all summer. Granddad always watched the same channel, totally engrossed in the things the uniformed man was saying to the other stern men. The uniformed man had a name like Popeye's girlfriend. Ollie, ollie, oxen free.

Granddad grumbled at the TV a lot that summer. I knew Granddad had been in the Navy in WWII, though I didn't know yet what Iwo Jima meant, or what a kamikaze did. I knew Granddad had worn a uniform and assumed the man on TV, wearing a uniform, must be on the same side as my granddad. So I guessed that Granddad was unhappy with the way the stern men kept asking Ollie all those questions. Learning that Ollie worked for President Reagan clinched it in my eight-year-old head: President Reagan kind of looked like my Granddad--leathery, dark-haired old white men--so of course they must be on the same team.

Well, I know a little more about those Reagan years now than I knew while getting my fingers muddy and wearing out my sneakers. I found out about a few of the things that went on in Central America while I was in elementary school. I learned who the Sandinistas were, and the Contras. I read about Oscar Romero. I found out about the young men sent to Central America by Reagan and his underlings, and I've seen a few scars of which they will not speak.

Still, I knew my parents were Republicans, so I figured everyone else in our family must also be Republicans, as a kid. And since politics and religion were the twin no-nos at family gatherings, I never had any reason to think differently. Granddad died five years ago, and we'd never had any reason to talk politics.

Then one day last year my Grandma mentioned a recent speech by Al Gore. "Wasn't it brilliant?" she said.

"Yeah!" I said, surprised. "Uh...I thought you and Granddad were Republicans?" Maybe the present administration had changed her mind, I thought.

She recoiled as if I'd questioned the legitimacy of her birth. "Land sakes, no!" she exclaimed. "We were Democrats even before FDR. You know, growing up in Arizona, I remember knowing miners who were beaten and even killed by 'company men' just for trying to form a union. No, we've always been Democrats. Your mom switched her registration when she married your dad, but not your granddad and me."

Delighted, but still a little confused, I asked, "Didn't Granddad like Reagan, though? I thought he was pretty defensive of Ollie North during the Iran-Contra hearings..."

"Your granddad couldn't stand Reagan," Grandma said. Turns out all that grumbling at the TV was aimed at Ollie his own self, not at his questioners. I guess their vague resemblance, to an eight year old, just wasn't enough to endear the President and his policies to my grandfather.

So RIP to Ronnie. Not my favorite President, he'll still always be the first one I remember, the one whose existence as President had nothing to do with politics in my mind, but seemed synonymous with the USA.

And every mention of Reagan will forever remind me of my Granddad, and of one misunderstood summer TV drama. RIP, Granddad. Wish we could've talked politics, after all.