Arol Wulf-Zendik

The Human Spirit

        So many times I start my day with a touch of anxiety.  I worry about this and that, and then the sky catches my eye and no matter the color or form, the sight of the sky whether night or early morning rescues me from my negativity or morbidity!   Sometimes it’s the sight of a bird flying in the morning sky, sometimes the moon catches my breath as it has done all my life.  The colors are gone now from the hills and winter is slowly, inexorably coming on and my friends and neighbors both look forward to its’ beauty and enforced slowing-down and also the dread of intense, unremitting cold and sometimes enforced at–home-confinement. 

I think of myself sometimes as a whiner and complainer, but through it all I have to admit that I very rarely lose hope if I’m sincerely questioned about my beliefs, my core beliefs.  Nonetheless, I don’t handle myself in a very honorable way, I’d say, half the time.  By the time, I get my morning started, exercise, take care of my various aging or sick dogs, feed the parrot and renew my friendship with him, a very bad bird, I’m kind of exhausted and crabby as hell.  If I add listening to the international news on top of all that, I can be left mad, frustrated or downright scared!

Listening to the local news has a kind of soothing on me, ‘cause most things talked about are familiar to me.  I either know the people involved or know the organizations or the towns.  I don’t have to guess what this or that place looks like and how the people are and I don’t have to try to understand the craziness of international high finance, which I don’t think anyone understands.  Just seems like a complicated game to me and, we, Wulf and I, used to say, if you don’t understand it, its’ bullshit.

But then, I am amazed and so moved by the Spirit in human beings.  I live in a place now, Pocahontas County, West Virginia, USA, which I don’t intend to ever leave (well, maybe for a while in dead of winter!)  I am engaged here, caught by neighbors, friends, people who work in areas I do or am interested in, such as publishing, writing, speaking, gardening, media, any of the arts, community planning and beautification.  Poetry and music are alive and more than well here in these beautiful mountains.  My soul is involved here where I live and although I’ve traveled everywhere and lived everywhere this is the second time this has happened to me.  I only left the first place because of my husband’s sickness and hopes of a better environment.  Here, I will never leave.

My friends’ daughter was in an automobile accident when she was 16 years old.  The pressure on her brain was so intense, so high, that her parents, my dear friends, were called to the hospital 3 times to say goodbye.  Every time; she lived, contrary to medical opinion.  Her parents slept on the floor of her hospital room willing her to live, loving her to live.  Her father knew if they lost her, he could lose his beautiful wife.  Their daughter lived through months of touch-and-go and rehab and through it all her will to live shone like a beacon.  “Vegetable” was the prognosis if she did live. Her parents and her sister knew their love and support could possibly pull her through.  And they never wavered and did pull her through.  When she couldn’t talk and they thought she may never; she started signing to the intern at the hospital one day.  She had learned American Sign Language when she was in second grade, never used it past then, but when she couldn’t talk, she signed!  She communicated – she used everything she had to survive.  She is alive and though, she will probably never be completely whole, (but who of us is completely whole), she has a lovely, brilliant boyfriend who takes care of her and loves her, she tries for college even flunking out, but trying again.

 I cry as I hear bits and pieces of the story.  I cry for all of us and our enormous toughness, our grit, our ability to survive, form close ties of love and loyalty, our tenacious hold and Love for life.  In spite of tears, fears, betrayal, accidents, disease, loss and death – we go on trying for enlightenment and fulfillment and Love.

I keep wanting to write about the high international finance economy that holds all countries and their people in bondage, but I can’t.   It isn’t a story of love and hope and caring and seeking.  It’s a story of cunning and deceit and games played to keep the rich richer and poor poorer.  As I’ve said before, I care nothing for pyramids and castles or “great” empires.  They were all created by a humanity in bondage.  And through it all, through the centuries, our courage, our will to survive – to live and, yes, Love, continues and it’s that which should rule the planet, not dumb, cruel money games played by emperors, pharohs, kings, presidents, central banks and international money funds run by men and women engaged in a deadly corrupt game.  Yes, it’s true. The rich do get richer and the poor poorer and that ain’t nothing to be proud of or to ignore.  It is my friends and their stricken daughter who teach me the value of life, who inspire me to keep on trying and keep on loving.  Inspire me to keep seeking friendship and love and enlightenment.  It’s my friends and their lovely, rebellious, against-all-odds precious child that keeps my  hope alive for all of us.

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet and the not-at-all.  Do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach.  The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.”                   Ayn Rand…………shared on facebook for us by my friend Ginny Ramos

The Lying

              “I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own.  If you can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill you up to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.”  Oriah Mountain Dreamer

 

The lying and pretending in human social life saps my energy, takes away my creativity and leaves me sad and sometimes panicked.  I get so tired of the lying, the pretending that hides the pain, fear and anger beneath the nice façade presented by so many.  The direct lying, the false story or act or the more prevalent, insidious and cruel lying by omission.  “Just don’t say anything and no one will ever know.  Just ‘put on as face’ and they’ll never know what you’re really thinking.”

And they don’t know, because they/we have our own problems and if someone wants to lie or pretend to us, we haven’t the time or energy to pursue what’s really going on.  Of course, if a lie is simply horrendous we do act up and want to know the truth, but, whether we know we’re being lied to or not, we do sense and feel the lie, our bodies and souls take the shock, the hit of the lie and that lying eventually erodes at our Soul, Spirit and Mind, till we are forced to live a life of fear and pain.  I see how lying can kill what’s pure and delightful in life.  Turns us all into pretenders.

We are lied to constantly by advertising, by our government, by priest and preachers, in schools and at home.  We can’t just collapse in front of each other and confess to our confusion and pain, instead we have a secret place where we know the truth, but no one else does.  We don’t think we can share it and probably can’t – we’d be ridiculed or cast out of society!  Anyway, if we did that, how could busyness go on.  There might be groups of people everywhere talking to each other discussing their pain and joy.  Yes, business would have to slow way down, wouldn’t it?

Ah, the pretence……..to protect what?  To cover up what?  If we all learned to tell the truth, (like any art form, it would have to be learned) life would be so much fun, so much lighter, so much more pleasurable – we wouldn’t go to war, nor would we want anyone to be in poverty or pain.  We would do everything we could to help each other and hang on to the purity we were all born with, the sheer delight of being alive and discovering something new every day, something we could share with others if we weren’t so busy holding up the façade, which is civilized life.

Where can we do that?  Could we make pacts, truth-pacts with each other and the deal would be to tell the truth no matter what?  Well, we could start with our children – kids love the truth.  We could start with our mates – much more problematical because of need and sex and inborn fears of self-revelation that might drive our love away.  We could start with art or craft – any art or craft, which would demand a deep honesty; a need to tell the truth about ourselves and possibly through that process teach us to be truthful beings.  Unafraid and unashamed.

Whichever and whenever – maybe we could find places, opportunities to tell the truth.  We’d all be so much happier and beautiful.  That’s the quality of telling the truth – it makes you beautiful.  I mean really beautiful – not by trick photography, trick lighting, trick make-up, but real beauty; take-your- breath-away kind of beauty.  The beauty I see and feel when my grandchildren look at me.  The  joy  I experience of seeing human beings that are true.  I love it.  It makes my day happen and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.  I don’t see that loveliness much; I mostly see lies and pretence, masks; and so many times I feel like I’m living in an insane asylum where the noise or silence is deafening and no one is reaching out to anyone.  Those who do are deemed insane or put to death.

Yes, the days get tedious and no place to run or hide anymore except maybe talk to my dead husband! We did that pact to tell each other the truth; it was rough, but by the time of  his death we had achieved a friendship we could believe in.  Since his death much more understanding, so sometimes I sit on the bench near where his bones lie and talk to him.  I cry and talk and carry-on even laugh sometimes – a place of mine to be completely honest, just as blunt as I choose.  It lightens the load – the load of people, the load of a bone-crushing economy that turns us all, rich or poor, into drones in the cause of  holding up an edifice of suffering and pain.

No, find a place where you can soar, where you can sing, where you can feel alive and true and let that place expand into the rest of your life and it will touch others and reach out, growing, and will touch the stars, all of humanity and the creatures we share our beautiful, ravaged planet with.  Your truth will reach out ultimately to all the Universe, expressing the Love that’s in us, the Love that is expressed when we can feel and tell the truth, the honesty within us.

“To speak what you do not believe in the deepest depth of Self is to lie.  To speak words that emanate from the brain not Soul is to exist in a fearful charade, a pretense of Power.  There is no daring there.  It is the coward’s way….  You need not fear.  You are energy-eleMental.  You are the Mind Infinite and Universal… you are its Manifestation unto Mortality.  Thus you are so Divine as It is Divine.  Doubt not this Truth.  All Power awaits your Yes.  Your Love is barren without this.  There is not Life without your Yes.  There is existence only.”                    Wulf Zendik……………..Affirmations

 

 

 

 

My Birthday

My birthday is always bittersweet. Wulf 's birthday was October 7, mine the 14th.  We celebrated both on my birthday, which he preferred.  So he and I, in so many ways, bound to each other, were also bound when it came to our birthdays!

Also, 8 years ago, on my birthday, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  I asked my doctor when  he called at 6:00 that evening, with the news, what my chance of survival was, he said, "very slim" .  When the woman in the lab  who took my blood that day realized it was my birthday, she said, "Oh, I'm so sorry, my dear".  Clearly, she felt it was an awful time to be tested for cancer.

On October 22, a week later, I was in surgery - 5 hours, successful, the surgeon felt, said he got everything. A few days later, the nurse came and told me that he was going to throw the book at me; as strong chemo as possible.  I thought, no way, and went to Mexico for post-op treatment and so far I'm alive!

My birthday is loaded with so much; love, loss, fear, terror, curiosity, pain and fun with my family and friends.  There's a tension in me till the day passes.  But on my birthday, this year, last week, I heard a rendition of the song, 'Autumn Leaves', by Eric Clapton that made me sob.  It was one of Wulf and my favorite love songs and I usually unconsiously start to sing it to myself around October.  We would also fool around with the song, for the kids' entertainment, singing it dramatically out loud to each other.

 

Thanks to Eric Clapton for a lovely rendition and beautiful guitar.  And thanks to my friend, Diane, on station WVMR for playing it that morning, not knowing what it meant to me.  I hadn't requested it!  So strange, but not;  she and I had shared so much when she lost her 17 year old son.  It was a long time for me to recover from her loss and she will never.  She'll learn to live with it, but never get over it.  I know a loss of a child will never be gotten over, but somehow one has to learn to live and go on for everyone and everything one loves and those who love you.

When I was diagnosed with cancer all I could think of was that it wouldn't be right for me to die, because my daughter had just lost her father a few years before and it would be too unfair, too cruel for her to lose both of us. 
That was my prayer, my focus, my meditation -- my will.  I went to Mexico for treatments that were not available to me here in the States.  I knew the doctor who had moved to Mexico in order to be able to freely use those treatments.  He has a 50% rate of success rather than the horrible low percentage here.  In Mexico I was treated like the sickness could be beaten. I wasn't sent into a cancer industry.

Yes, I eat organically; have for 50 years, garden organically; yes, I've lived a different life-style than most and, yes, I got cancer.  The organics and lifestyle helped protect me and pulled me through.  I'd be dead otherwise.  Not so strange, but research shows women get ovarian cancer after the loss of their husband and I am part of that statistic.

Shortly before the diagnosis, I had visited doctors and alternative healers, not feeling well, but no one caught it.  I had begun feeling sick and not right the last few months of Wulf's life, but I didn't go to get checked out, because I couldn't deal with anything wrong with me, when his life was soon to end and tending him was all I could handle.  I wanted my total focus on him.

After his death, I sought help, but again, no one caught it.  It's a tough one to find, buried deep in a woman's body.  It had been brewing a while and with his oncoming death, my mind/body went haywire and they removed a 2 lb. tumor, which luckily had not metastized, in other words, wasn't in my lymph.  The surgeon said it was "clean" and I attribute that to organics and lifestyle as a barrier against our poisoned enivornment, which kills so many. The poisons tend to store in the fatty internal tissues of our body, which means breasts, ovaries, liver, testes.etc.  In other countries, the medics try anything that might work, here there is chemo and radiation as the treatment of choice, which can kill in itself.

When this happened good friends told me to seek any treatment I believed in, whatever it was and I did and I am grateful to them for their encouragement.  I would say the same to anyone seeking help.  Do what  you believe will work -- listen to your heart, to your gut and it will lead you right.  It doesn't matter if it's chemo, radio-waves, listening to music, anything you feel good about.  A very good friend referred to the cancer as a phase, an interlude, and that also gave me hope to survive.

I understand that scientific researchers are beginning to feel the heart has as much to do with our reasoning as the brain, and we all know the gut does.  Strange, but not; when I was seeking help, a macrobiotic teacher I knew, read my palm and told me that I was lucky.  I had had that reading from other psychics in the past.  He showed me a break in my life-line, but that it picked up again and when cancer came, I hoped the readings were right and later I knew they were right.

I have so much to give thanks for, so many people -- from the fantastic surgeon, his great nurse, the doctors and nurses in Mexico, friends and family who helped me survive.  So much love I've been blessed with.  The poem that follows was written by my daughter, Fawn, for me on one of my birthdays.  I'm sharing it not because it's about me, but so you'll know about my daughter's love and she's just such a damn good poet!

                     a deep yellow center

                silver radiating out to black tips

         where stars dance and form fires of gold.

   Across these folds of color a sweet wind blows.

               Out of this land steps a princess,

                                 a warrior,

                                  a queen.

                    She holds the sun in her heart

                        and the wind in her hands.

           She shimmers with the colors of her land

                         and smells sweet of life.

                           I am lifted by the wind,

                              cradled by her arms

                          and warmed by her heart.

           Gently I am set down in that deep yellow center

                                   the fire sears my feet

                               there's fire in my heart.

                               I turn to run, to escape

                       and there washing over me are her eyes

                                               pure, clear

                                             cool blue eyes.

                                      Within me life balances

                                 and I no longer fear the colors.

                                     I hold the sun in my heart

                                     and the wind in my hands

                                                 and we turn

                                         and we walk her lands

                                                     of color

                                                      and fire

                                                      and wind

                                                        and life

                                       and she is my queen, my warrior,

                                                          my mother.

                                                                                  Fawn Wulf

                 

 

Vets Cry When Foals Die

 

Legacy died yesterday, October 11, 2010.

  Our little colt died yesterday and even vets cry when foals die.  He was 5 weeks old and his mother and we adored him.  To watch him run, play and little-horse prance up to you to be petted and loved was one of the joys of life.

Horses...... I've lost ones I've loved so much.  In over 50 years of raising and caring and burying beloved creatures, I'm still not used to it.  Instead of getting "realistic" and hardening towards the facts of sickness and death, I seem to grow more vulnerable.  I thought I'd never recover from the death of our draft horse, Martha and her little foal, or my dog Simba or cat Playa.  And I don't think I ever have.  They are part of me now, their Spirit lives on inside my body, soul and mind.  I've sung and written about them and I thought yesterday I wouldn't write about Legacy's death; but at 6:00 a.m. today there's nothing else to think or write about.  Tears fall, this morning, tears of loss.

Our vet, Dr. McHale, came out, said he didn't think there was a chance, but we felt to take him to one of the best equine hospitals in the world, the one in Blacksburg, Va, just in case there was a chance.  Arrangements were made and we transported him and his mommy 3 hours away for whatever slim chance there might be.  I watched him being loaded -- leg splint on his wounded leg, took 2 strong men to hold him for his shots, loaded fine -- alive and strong, not in bad pain yet  --  strong and beautiful and I knew there was a good chance I'd never see him alive again.  Surreal, but true.

 

"Less than 1% chance of survival", the vet said, there at Blacksburg, tears in her eyes at what the x-rays found.  Found what she hoped not to see, she said.  I can't help feeling again, as I write this, that some of the greatest people I've ever known are vets and pediatric surgeons.

They put him to "sleep""  --  he was already sleeping for the x-rays and to prevent the pain and suffering and eventual dying of the little one, if we didn't; we agreed it was best.

Oh, how many have I cried over -- I thought the tears were gone, but they started last night and I am still crying this morning and as soon as its' light, I'll go see his mother and hope that on the ride home with her dead little one, she processed that  he's gone.  11 months she was pregnant, 5 weeks she had him -- I've seen horse mothers cry for their babies, their little lost ones, whinnying and whickering and sighing for their baby for days and I've felt the pain all through me and do again.

Horses --  they mean so much to us.  Anyone who's grown close to a horse knows the peculiar way they get into your heart - different than dogs or cats, but the same intensity of love and pleasure and sometimes exasperation.  My daughter, Fawn, loves to train them, she finds so much pleasure in the connection between her and the horses. Watching her on her horse, Nipper and the dressage moves they do together is like hearing great music.  As far as myself, I've loved taming wild ones, without ever needing to be harsh, but communicate until the fear of humans is gone and the day they nuzzle me, I feel an emotion  that is a mix of love, respect and awe.  Honored that I'm being trusted by this now, once-wild creature.

Yes, General Robert E. Lee, loved his horse, Traveler.  The beautiful white horse brought him through a brutal war and I like that he got Traveler from a ranch in Lewisburg, West Virginia, a little ways from where I live.  And the story of Man-O-War, who ran when I was a child and the love so many felt for him, 'Big Red'; so much that when he retired, throusands of people turned out to cheer as he walked the track by himself -- his last hurrah!

The book, "King of the Wind", my most favorite as a young girl in New York, the big beautiful book my dad bought for me, which I pressed roses into and read to my children and granchildren and the James Herriot books (All Creatures Great and Small), a series about a vet and his experiences; the books beloved by my daughter and one of my grandsons.  The books of Maguerite Henry, Misty of Chincoteague, etc., which I read to my grandson last year.  These indelible stories and more about the creatures we share our lives with.

Yesterday was a sad day and today sadness and grief intermingle in the incredible dance of Life.

 

"Every moment is made glorious by the Light of Love."

Love-Making.......

"The way you make love is the way God will be with you."      - Rumi

 

I have been wanting to write this entry for quite a while and was reminded of that the other day while sitting in an office waiting for an appointment.  There was the magazine, Cosmopolitan, which I guess I really despise.  I feel it's a horrible rag that targets women and teaches them to be barely this side of hookers.     I remember when Helen Gurley Brown started the magazine after her book was a best seller.  She wanted to set women free from a certain sexual repression and bondage we had all been subjected to.  I thought at the time that was an admirable goal.  I never used to read it and still don't, just glanced through it most times.

Now I must admit, I cannot stand it.  It's pop, "fun" attitude is kind of sickening.  The pop emphasis on technique, using it to escape from the art of loving, leaves sex cold and frightening -- scary the next day or week or lifetime, wondering who you are and what you've been doing anyway.  And these magazines are being selected by our young women to learn what the "right" moves are and imitate it. 

I remember reading a teen magazine religiously when I was a teen-ager.  I agonized over having the right haircut, the right clothes, the right look.  Now our young girls have to agonize over the "right moves" as well.  What they cannot understand at such a tender age, is that under all the "fun" and "right moves" is rampant repression and fear  --  unresolved and untended --- ruining lives and destroying Souls.  What they cannot understand, is that in a culture where free sexuality is feared, there is a disgust with the sexual act and that leads to an absolutely shallow view of what sexuality really is.

I have much more respect for the fashion magazines and even the hard-core pornography magazines, which are what they are, without pretense at anything else.  Funny how modeling has turned into a soft-porn industry.  All the photo-shopping to fix up everyone, all the sexual attitudes to sell.  Of course, as they've always known in the advertising world, sex sells. 

Making Love is an art and like any artform where you are attempting to express your feelings. There are techniques that can make the experience more pleasurable, easier for you to express yourself.

 
But techniques can be learned through loving, just like the doing of any art.  You have to work in it, coming from your Soul, from your Need, from your feelings of Love and you, with a loving partner, will learn the techniques.  You'll learn them truly.  They will not be an overlay, they will not contain preconception.  You may have studied technique, but you can never achieve greatness without Love.  Love is the dynamic driving Force and it will bring you to any technique you may need.

'"Only love can Heal", Wulf wrote once, and only Love can bring us into the presence of the God-Force... the Divine Power that drives the Universe. 
And Love has no boundaries, no rules, no "right moves". Whether you love for an hour, a minute, a day, a week, a life time or forever, there is nothing to follow except your own drive for giving and receiving Love.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is the preoccupation of these women's pop magazines with sex are offensive to me, because they portray sexuality as merely actions and attitudes to do and do not bother with the holistic reality; which is that sex, love making, is part of Love  and one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful way, we can transcend ourselves and be with another human that is unavailable any other way.

We need to respect that, savor it, treasure it and not make light of the potential to understand and feel our religious Self.

 

"Sex is Love, or it's nothing.  It's not conquest, it's not achievement, it's not a contest.  It's Love, an exchange.  And love is a progressive thing, if you love something and you give it all your creativity, intellectual and emotional-sensual creativity, it expands, it keeps growing -- and so will your sexual pleasure."         Wulf Zendik          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art and Sex Part 1

"I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty everyday, and if you can source your life from God's presence."   -   Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Thinking - at 3:00 a.m. should I publish this, is it anyone's business, what will they think of me and then finally, Miles Davis song "So What" takes away the fears.  Woke writing, writing in my mind, writing about my life in Art And Sex.

I was a virgin when I married at 18.  No one believed I was, but I was.  I always had a "look" they said, in my family and in the neighborhood and when I did a screen test in Hollywood years later, the producer, who ordered the test, had them do it again, cause,  he said, the cameraman hadn't caught my "look".  They did it again, and the "look" was there and I got the part in a hit series, but I met Wulf at the same time and ran off with him to his studio in the desert - to poverty and Love and great Art and away from fame and travel and money and I think my mother never forgave me and the big producer got pissed and told me I was an idiot.  But, you know, it was the greatest choice I ever made.  It saved my life.  At the crossroads, as the poet Robert Frost said, I chose the road less traveled and I'm told now in my 70's that I still have the "look":

What is the "look'?  Maybe it was called sexy, but I never played that game, have never "come-on".  I either was attracted or not.  I think the look is of a girl-child loved by her father and a girl/teen loved by her uncles and I think it's the look of a girl/woman who is at her ease with men and actually became great friends with her mate.  A woman who likes men and finds them odd and funny and exasperating and sometimes, scary and altogether lovely -- like gentle summer rain or a roaring, raging storm.  They are capable of both and I love them for it.  Except, let's face it, they shouldn't run the world without real women by their sides with equal say.  They've proven they are abysmal failures at that!

I was a tomboy when I was a kid, playing stickball and handball on the streets of New York City.  I was a nut baseball fan and can still tell you about the day the Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Giants in the World Series when Bobby Thompson hit the home run in the ninth inning.  I cried for days and gave up baseball!  I was captain of the girls basketball team and loved playing soccer and when I dropped my teen-age grandkids off at the local football game the other night and saw that the whole town had turned out to cheer the team  on, I was so thrilled at everyone's support, you didn't get much of that as a kid in Brooklyn.

When I went to the Village in New York City, (Greenwich Village), the home to artists for generations, I was 19 and entered the world of artists (beatniks, they were called then) and really, I've never left.  I was with a man who was the inspiration of a character in Kerouac's "Dharma Bums".  It was he who introduced me to foreign films, jazz clubs, other artists, the famous beatniks, and the Village bars, the artist bars and the late night food  joints and we could drink and eat till 4:00 a.m. in New York City, go through the tunnel to Jersey City, keep drinking till 6:00 a.m. when those bars stayed opened, then head back to the city to continue.  Always with a gang of  writers, painters, musicians  and the women with them.  It was fun and kind of a haze and painful all at once.  I was learning to act at the same time, landing roles in off-Broadway plays learning to be an artist.

We were on a search with each other and the world and how to express what we were experiencing and feeling about the world and ourselves through Art and Sex.  Even the barfights, and they were real and crazy, were that frustration and longing for expression, though I, myself always hid in the phone booth or under the table when they happened!  My friend, then left for the west coast and friends he had out there.

It was shortly after this, I flipped out over my own sorrow, nothing to do with  him, but a serious flip.  The kind that found me laying on the sidewalks crying, the kind that found me brought home by various men, to sleep safe in their homes and sex was not sought from me, just protection and haven given to me, the kind of flip where I would walk into a restaurant and the women working there would feed me without charge, and the men who sold flowers would give them to me for my hair.  I wandered my city, unable to sleep, just feel.  And finally my friend's Mafia father and his friends came to my apartment, told me that my friend wanted me to come to San Francisco and get well and so they packed up my stuff and we drove through the city to the airport. 

i cried all the way through the city, saying farewell to the city of my birth, my family, who'd given up on me.  I was too scared to get on the enormous jet, so I got drunk and the guys, laughing, took out insurance on me (practical!) and off I went to a new life on the west coast.  To west coast jazz,, to cool, to wide beautiful skies; still crazy talking out loud to myself, wondering who's voice it was and discovering it was mine! To artists in North Beach and the Haight and the performances in theatres and eventually the National Theatre in Mexico City and to the plays of Garcia Lorca, then to New York City to a scholarship at the Actors Studio, living with a famous stage actress.  Art got me well, acting saved my life.  But flipping came back stronger and it was back to Los Angeles and there, in that insane barren land, of all places, met Wulf.

And now I hear from a wonderful young man - an artist who has been labeled, either by  himself or others, as a loser. And all artists and maybe all men, who aren't CEO's or movie or rock or sport stars, think they're losers.  And living in a competitive, immoral, hypocritical society are always going to feel bad if they haven't the ruthlessness, the lack of soul, the sublimation of the need for personal love, to fight for their small stardom.  And in the end, I must ask, what kind of human being are you, my friend, what kind of man - not winner or loser, but human being - what are you made of - who are you really in your heart, mind and soul, how do you help, how do you love.

There are no winners or losers in the Universe or on this planet we share - there is only the grand scheme of Love drive by eleMental energy, the energy that expresses who you are and  how you express that great energy;  expand and grow with the Divinity of Life or let Life shrivel and die in your competitive grasp.  I would say to my new friend, your pursuit of excellence is all there is and ultimately your pursuit should lead you to a Life of Excellence.  Art won't let you down if you let its' process take you, expand you and let  you become a Lover and Giver.  That is what great art does to you.  The work itself demands that of you.

A 'loser' is a morality judgment made upon yourself by an unloving, ungiving, culture.  A culture of war, greed, economic slavery, lies and pain and no winning for anyone.  Your relationships contain your Hope, that is your Soul-saving, that is the legacy you leave.  Don 't judge yourself by untrue standards.  Those standards keep you in distraction and bondage.  Go free of all that. One of the last things, my great love, Wulf ,told me a few days before he died, was, "have fun, baby, don't be bored."  It took a while to take the advice, but in it is the Great Loving Adventure of Life -  the Loving Force of what is known as God.

 

 

"I believe the practice of Art is a religious expression --- Art is Creativity; Aesthetics superimposed upon Imagination, powered by Will."              Wulf Zendik            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

My "Office" During Harvest Season

Words from Jesse Jackson to Obama. Right on!

    I read this article yesterday from the Daily Beast. I thought it was great and wanted to share it. For all of Rev. Jackson's foibles, I have always admired his guts and big mouth.

The woman who told the president she was “exhausted” of trying to defend him is like a canary in the mine who must be heard, the reverend says. He tells The Daily Beast's Shushannah Walshe that Obama's advisers' "point of view is conditioned by their privileges and their point of view is conditioned by their experiences. Their point of view is from the top down. They see the world differently."

Velma Hart’s impassioned plea to President Obama on Monday was a wakeup call not to take his most loyal supporters for granted. The president desperately needs his base to go to the polls in November, but Hart’s exasperation revealed a clear disconnect with that core group of supporters. Tuesday’s news that National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers is departing the administration may be a sign that Obama is realizing that his base is slipping away and he must take steps to reclaim it.

In an interview with The Daily Beast at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Obama ally Rev. Jesse Jackson said he understands Hart’s struggles and offered some advice to Obama on how to solve some of the country’s problems. He even stressed that America needs a second stimulus, despite the potential political unpopularity.

Jackson said he hopes whoever replaces Summers in the administration comes “from a different school of thought.”

“I think we need some bottom-up visionaries,” he said. “I think those who look from the bottom up and those who look from the top down are reconcilable, but I think the bottom-up visionaries are enormously beneficiary to the country.”

“He genuinely cares,” Jackson said. “But truth, like electricity, requires a conduit. He needs more conduits to the zones of pain.”

Asked if Summers represents a disconnect with the president’s base, Jackson replied, “The core of them—Summers, Geithner—these guys come out of the Wall Street, Harvard community, and their point of view is conditioned by their privileges and their point of view is conditioned by their experiences. Their point of view is from the top down. They see the world differently.”

Jackson was careful to compliment the president and praise his “tremendous work,” but he explained that his supporters are not feeling the results of that work. He described them as the “canaries in the mine” and said the president must listen to them.

“He genuinely cares,” Jackson said. “But truth, like electricity, requires a conduit. He needs more conduits to the zones of pain. He was trying to hear those people [like Velma Hart] at the town hall. But he’s not hearing it in the staff meeting. What he hears in the staff meeting and what he heard in the town hall are two different things.”

What the president needs, Jackson said, is to inspire his base.

“In each of these cities, public teachers are being laid off, public housing is reduced, and foreclosures are rising. That’s the base of people who had the most hope, and the conduit is not connecting enough to revive their spirit to fight back.”

Jackson’s prescription includes a targeted war on poverty to directly address out-of-work Americans and what the reverend calls the new face of poverty: men and women who had a house and job six months ago. His plan includes a moratorium on home foreclosures for returning veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq; and student loan forgiveness so college students graduating without jobs won’t fall into poverty.

He also has a plan to revitalize Detroit using the same urban reconstruction plan for Iraq that he’s hoping will bring the dying city back.

“In Detroit 90,000 homes [were] vacated, and lots abandoned,” Jackson said. “If there were some kind of urban homesteading program for people who once lived there, they can retrieve their house and do apprentice training: learning to be landscapers and brick masons and painters, and you have to buy a product to do that reconstruction. People could feel that…There is a clear plan for reconstruction in Baghdad, but not in Detroit.”

And Jackson said the country needs a second stimulus, despite the unpopularity of the first, which “spent tons of money on relatively few and left a vast number of people not only out, but sinking.”

He said a second stimulus would help Americans who are facing home foreclosure, put people back to work, and cut poverty. Jackson declined to say he was disappointed in Obama, but stressed that the people struggling in this economy need “resources to flow unfettered.”

And that will help politically.

“It is the masses of people who voted in unusual patterns in 2008 that made the difference. Those people are being represented by Ms. Hart, and I am for one working to convince her and others that the stakes are incredibly high,” Jackson said. “If those who voted in 2007—if their roots are watered, flowers will blossom. They were the key in 2008; they are the key in 2010.”

Asked if he had told the president about his formula to get the country back on its feet and revive the base, Jackson said he had spoken to “some of his people” but believes that if Obama took his advice, things would be better.

“It was like Shirley Sherrod said: I’m not interested in coming to the White House. I want you to come to south Georgia to see what is really happening on the ground, because he is a fast learner and a very passionate guy. So I think if the conduits are in place for the connectivity, you’ll see results, but right now we are watering the leaves.”

 

Women, Our Children and Idealism

"I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty everyday, and if you can source your life from God's presence."

 

I have been witness to a very strange phenomenon.  It happens when women become mothers.  I see rebellious, intelligent, fun young women turn into old, silent, conformity-worshiping women before my eyes.  Where once you could discuss almost anything with them -- about world events or psychological problems or their relationship with men, now they can only discuss diapers and laundry and the events of their children's growth blow by blow.   They seem to not want to hear anything that might disturb the bubble known as "Mother and Child".  When tragic events are discussed, they leave the room or start talking among themselves about such things as doing the laundry or shopping.  They don't want to hear about what's happening on our planet and to the creatures, including ourselves, who share this place.  They don't seem to want to know anything  that might be painful.

Please don't misunderstand - I've done and do plenty of laundry, shopping and diapers and consider those chores as important as art, philosophy, religion and politics, but without those subjects, I'd shrivel and die.  I rememeber when I had my daughter Fawn when I was 38 years old.  Knowing the kind of world I would be bringing her into, I realized it would be an act of faith -- a revolutionary act, if you will, to dare bring a child into this mess of a world.  Having a child made me more radical, not less, made me want to help and work towards a better world more, not less.  I couldn't bury my head in the pretend pop world, but had to face more than ever the true circumstances of the world and that I was bringing new, precious life into it.

I remember many years ago in the 80's when we were living in Topanga Canyon, California, when the young group (at that time) of Greenpeace, were starting out in the world of action.  Many of those people working out of California would stay with us at our home in the Canyon.  They were facing the whalers then and determined to make a difference.  Paul Watson visited at that time, when he had just broken with Greenpeace.  Greenpeace thought him too radical, but Wulf encouraged him, called him a hero and knew success had to be ours because of the children.

Anyway, many of the women involved at that early time had decided not to have children.  They didn't want to bring new life into this world of pollution, pain and war.  When many hit their mid and late 30's, as I had years before,  they changed their minds and decided they wanted to go for it -- they wanted children, and they would raise them to be, as Zendik used to say, warriors for the planet Earth.  Having a child made their commitment much deeper to want to save everything -- not less. 

I have written about mothers and their children elsewhere.  I have seen that mothers (we women) do create future men and women and that so many women have trained male children to be lone heroes, loners without commitment or attachment to anything but their own self-serving interests and have raised their female children to become objects for males - concerned only with hair, teeth, nails, weight-loss, fashion and laundry.  All to serve a culture that is competitive, profit-seeking, patriarchal, and without Love or Friendship for anything, but to perptuate itself.

 Sorry, moms, that doesn't work.  We have the power, the ability, to create children who care about  other human beings, animals, the planet and the Universe itself.  These feelings of Love come easily to children.  They are naturally sympathetic and caring.  We can help those qualities grow in them, nurturing them, supporting them to help keep the Love and Compassion in them and bring that attitude into adulthood.  I feel that if enough children were raised and nurtured this way, there would be no war in a few generations - no deprivation, no starvation.  Our Loving children would help in the world, creating a lovely place to live and raise their own children.

My mother was committed to social change; participating in protests in the '30's, which often landed her in jail.  But when she had children, she gave all that up.  She said she was through with all that and wanted to have "nice things" for her children.  Through with her ideals, she thought.  My father and uncles were forbidden to preach social change in front of us kids.  But my uncles and father couldn't help themselves and, of course, we heard all about it

.My mother eventually couldn't help herself and I remember clearly, vacationing in Florida in the 1940's and getting on the public bus.  She purposely sat herself and us in the back of the bus with the segregated black people.  We were thrown off the bus, but she had followed her conscience.  Another time, she offered her seat to an elderly black women and was ejected once again and threatened with jail.  She didn't care, she said, she hated injustice and bigotry and she, herself, was totally without prejudice, and in spite of herself, could not help doing what was right!

So in the end, we heard all about the  unions and their eventual corruption. We heard about John Lewis. who organized and fought for decent working conditions for the coal miners.  We heard about Uncle Harry, who, at age 15, lost half his leg in a mining accident in West Virginia.  We knew about the strikes and the government's complicity in strike-breaking.  We heard of Mother Jones and Emma Goldman and we knew that our grandparents had taken long buckboard rides from the homestead on the Nebraska/South Dakota border to Omaha to hear Emma Goldman and other radicals of the day speak out.

Of course, I'm talking ideally.  Why shouldn't I?  Should I be promoting hate, fear, silence, backbiting, non-compassion and competition?  Of course I'm talking ideals ,and if enough of us are doing that we and our children will fight to create a beautiful and just world and we will not fear what's happening on our planet.  Our children would not be fearful, but strong, willing to face the issues before them and work to solve them.  Mothers who hide from the truth, who've given up the fight, as far as I'm concerned, do the worst for their children by shielding themselves and their children from the truth of the world.  They will create weak and frightened adults, afraid to stand up for what they know is true and to fight injustice wherever they find it

.I would urge women to become more committed for change not less because they've become mothers.  We have the honor of bearing the future generations  -- we must create strong, honorable, good people.

"Friendship, to be valid, must go beyoind you and me, must be universal.  And a friend of the Universe wants the best for the Universe and wants no part of anything that contributes to the contamination and destruction of any part of the Universe.                Wulf Zendik

Song

I love poetry and sometimes

long to sing again

Like a woman old of mountains and weather

and children and men

I love to sing.

The musicians all fled

Fear of the unknown

Where would the songs take them

Would they learn too much?

Would they fly so free and clear and

ring out through the hills?

Longing to Sing

Longing to sing, I did

When 60 years came to me

And when he died

my grief mutated to song

And when I got sick

my grief mutated to song

And when I knew they had all  lied

I was still....................