The last day of 2022

 Very recent deaths:  Pope Benedict died today.  Also, two others I never met, but knew their work:

Ian Tyson, Canadian singer-songwriter, and Barbara Walters, news anchor and pioneer for women in the news media.  

It seems that I knew many more people who died this year; most of them were in their eighties and some in their nineties.  Since I am approaching my mid seventies, it shouldn't surprise me.

Here's a poem from John O'Donoghue:

Oughtobiography

 

This "meme" appeared on Facebook today and it hit me between the eyes.

and then there is this little poem by Athey Thompson:

This long and lonely path

That I walk upon

Is full of mystery

And hope, that one day

I shall find my way home

art by Iris Esther

 Just stumbled upon this poem:

Burning the Old Year

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Still without my laptop

 Won't get it back until after January 3rd or so.  In the meantime, I have this nice loaner laptop which is great except it doesn't have my documents, especially the folder with my December blog posts, the pictures and poems I've been saving there.  Sigh.

So here is a recent picture from Facebook:

art by Sven Svenson

and another:

photo by Mark Amirault         

It doesn't look like this here!

How I became Invisible

 

Saw this on Facebook today.  I have known its truth for a long time, but she expresses it so well.

Sometime In My 50s, I Became Invisible To Men. Here’s What I Didn't Expect To Feel.

“I started to have to say ‘Hello?’ at the register to get the cashier’s attention. ‘This is it,’ I thought. ‘I’ve become invisible.’”

By 

Julia Williamson

Dec 26, 2022, 09:00 AM EST

I didn’t notice at first. It’s hard to sense the lack of a thing, like when you don’t realize your headache is gone until an hour after it starts to recede.

It’s not like I’d ever been a head-turner. Reasonably attractive, I’ve never stood out in the ways that make people either excited or uncomfortable. But I was pleasing enough (and pleasant enough) that I’d gather grins and glances.

But somewhere in my early 50s, people just stopped noticing me.

I started to have to say “Hello?” at the register to get the cashier’s attention. As I repeated my coffee order, I could see their eyes moving past me, lighting on younger, bolder, more interesting people.

“This is it,” I thought. “I’ve become invisible.”

I used to be visible. The attention I got from men ranged from appreciative smiles to flirting to catcalls that often turned to anger when I didn’t react the way they wanted. It could be nice, until it wasn’t, and it was tricky to see the line until it had been crossed.

Some guys flirted, and it felt sweet and sexy and fun. Others just gave me the creeps. The same behavior from different men could feel very different, which made navigating these encounters tricky. Constant vigilance is exhausting.

And sometimes I just didn’t want to be bothered. I wanted to go about my business without being sized up by entitled men who act as if you’ve been placed on the earth to please them. And that you should be grateful when they deign to notice you.

Google “women,” “50” and “invisible,” and you’ll get two kinds of results. The first will tell you that yes, it’s true, women stop being noticed in middle age. The next will give you all kinds of advice for beating the odds by staying relevant. Not surprisingly, that means staying relevant to men, the arbiters of power and bestowers of good fortune.

I grew up with casual sexism, as well as all those other isms. I learned early on that I was expected to smile, and prevaricate, and laugh along with misogynist jokes. My intrinsic pleaser fought with my internal rebel. I twinkled, I raged.

I wanted the male gaze, and I hated it. I was ready for love, ready for sex, and I wanted boys to notice me. But in order to be seen, I had to run the gauntlet of male cruelty. I’ve been busty since age 16. “Healthy set of … lungs!” said Paul. “I like your shirt ― especially the front,” said Blaine.

Jokes about my period, comments on my body, the razor-thin line to walk between being a prude and a slut; honestly, I wouldn’t wish female adolescence on anyone. Actually, that’s a lie. There are a lot of men who would benefit from being forced into a “Freaky Friday” situation with a teenage girl.

I remember sitting in my freshman dorm room with the guy who would become my first serious boyfriend. We were listening to music ― my music. Lou Reed came on, and my soon-to-be-paramour asked, “Do you know who this is?”

And did I answer then as I would now? “Um yeah ― I made this tape.”

I did not.

I paused, shy, and suddenly worried that “Walk on the Wild Side” might indeed be sung by someone I couldn’t identify.

At 19, I was constantly second-guessing myself, worrying about the way I was perceived. And that’s the black beating heart of it: These boys could tank my self-confidence with a word. How did they do it? They seemed endowed by their creator with a sense of self-assurance that I couldn’t muster. That must be what it is to walk the earth as a man.

It’s so exhausting to be a woman in the world. And it can still be scary, still requires vigilance. But I no longer feel that I’m being constantly evaluated, and it’s a huge relief.

I have so much more space in my head. Other people’s opinions have become less important over time in general. But when you’re not being watched, you’ve got a little more space in which to observe. And what I saw was an enormous number of people whose opinions don’t matter in the least.

Here’s what I’ve learned: People who love you think you’re beautiful. They care about your feelings. They’re interested in what you have to say. Those who ignore me, don’t matter to me. Their opinions don’t count. I decide if I’m relevant or interesting or valuable, not them.

So I’m embracing middle age, with its pains and surprises. Do I wish I looked the way I did at 30? Well sure, I’m human. But it doesn’t torment me. It’s the mirror I want to please, not the marketplace.

A few years ago I bought my teenage daughters T-shirts that say “Women Don’t Owe You Shit.” It’s everything I wanted to tell the world when I was 17, only the world didn’t want to hear that from me.

At 57, I have simply ceased to care. Sure, there’s a little disappointment to feeling like I’m no longer interesting. But on balance it’s just such a relief to walk down the street carelessly. I’m not braced for unwanted attention. No one invades my personal space.

No one has told me to smile in at least a decade.

It turns out I like flying under the radar. There are a lot of other extremely cool women hanging out with me down here, all of us equally invisible. And that, at last, is a group whose opinions I’m truly interested in.

The Second Day of Christmas

 

Here's an excerpt from Tennyson's long poem "In Memoriam"

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

   The flying cloud, the frosty light:

   The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

   The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind

   For those that here we see no more;

   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

   And ancient forms of party strife;

   Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

   The faithless coldness of the times;

   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

   The civic slander and the spite;

   Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

   Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

   Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

and here's another long one, from Robert Frost:

The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out

A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods—the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I’d hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth,

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,

“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”

                                                     “You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

• • 
    

• • 
    

A great poem from Ireland

 

I just came upon this poem and had to share it here:

A Christmas Childhood by Patrick Kavanagh

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost

How wonderful that was, how wonderful!

And when we put our ears to the paling-post

The music that came out was magical

The light between the ricks of hay and straw

Was a hole in Heaven’s gable. An apple tree

With its December-glinting fruit we saw

O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay

And death the germ within it! Now and then

I can remember something of the gay

Garden that was childhood’s. Again

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,

A green stone lying sideways in a ditch,

Or any common sight, the transfigured face

Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

My father played the melodion

Outside at our gate;

There were stars in the morning east

And they danced to his music

Across the wild bogs his melodion called

To Lennons and Callans.

As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry

I knew some strange thing had happened

Outside in the cow-house my mother

Made the music of milking;

The light of her stable-lamp was a star

And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle

A water-hen screeched in the bog,

Mass-going feet

Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,

Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel

My child poet picked out the letters

On the grey stone,

In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,

The winking glitter of a frosty dawn

Cassiopeia was over

Cassidy’s hanging hill,

I looked and three whin bushes rode across

The horizon — the Three Wise Kings

And old man passing said:

‘Can’t he make it talk –

The melodion.’ I hid in the doorway

And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat

I nicked six nicks on the door-post

With my penknife’s big blade –

There was a little one for cutting tobacco.

And I was six Christmases of age

My father played the melodion,

My mother milked the cows,

And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned

On the Virgin Mary’s blouse

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)