Eating and Healing: some evidence of scars

Eating my fill - SCARS!

I realize I come to this late Blog Woman, but how persuasive this post is is! (responding to this Huffington Post article  —thank you so much for posting! –my scars (repaired head following a rupture of an aneurysm) wouldn’t photograph nearly as well, but this is absolutely essential! –remnants of what’s left after cancerous consumption! –cancer is very hungry, (hungrier than Moxie Supper, who's sometimes just "greedy", but is often finicky --within her greed), and these pictures are a way of also feeding! --eating what’s necessary to survive even better! –I applaud this! -–I guess I too fear some unfriending, for many, many reasons, (some probably deserved, but not all of it; “life” has happened to me also, and I too continue, some form of me continues, only form (my "new normal") there will ever be –ie: this is the form from which changes will be made! –I’ll not remain just as I am, changing by the minute, going on to "I-can’t-say-what-for-sure", but traveling nevertheless… and often happy, often grateful that I can still travel at all! –-feeding on whatever becomes available. Having to feed in order to maintain any form of existence!

Blog Woman, I realize that I'm reiterating much of what has been said, but this is just a wonderful post! I suppose that I don't want to be "unfriended" either, and certainly not for changes in my body! --unavoidable, I feel, just be living to certain ages! --is a  "change" of a way and "rule" of existence? --which seems to be "change" --I'm nothing like the promise of me when I was born 60 years ago; I've changed substantially, and I'm not done; even when I die, my body will continue to change, and will be a feast for microbes, many of which are already with in me, held back by a living status, but when I die (and I will) that status will be invalid, ad those microbes can feat on this tiny body... only about 90 pounds and 4'10" tall... but still enough for a feast.

I don't have scars that are as visible as Beth's; mine are much more invisible (scar from a ruptured aneurysm; indentation on my head [that was bumpy anyway]), and the blindness, legal blindness, in my left eye due to optic neuritis due to MS (diagnosed in 1996, though I'd had MS since graduate school [when symptoms manifested in a first exacerbation in 1981[[face, lower right jaw, attributed to test anxiety, rigors of graduate study; legs next time ~circa 1982/3, swelling [[in my mind]] like incredible loaves of bread]] then dormant until 1996 --scars inside my body; not outside), and also scars from a c-section performed for the birth of my only biological child --old scar still visible from when I fell off a bike, breaking a glass jug of milk --still have scars above my knees from that, and from falling into a barbed wire fence "protecting a small tree lawn in Ohio, --and also emotional scars after a divorce after forty years when I was a teenager when I married at nineteen, who did a best that she could, becoming pregnant after a rape when I was just fifteen, rapist was an older man, 25 when I was fifteen. Remembered where he worked, this Deacon at my mother's church, so I called him and tried to tell him that I was pregnant, but he never spoke to me again, and hung up the phone... I had a third trimester abortion --after that rapist refused to ever speak to me again...

I was unable to tell anyone --not even --especially not my parents!-- I was left silent and frigid --"symptoms" the man I married (23 when I met him when I was still 16) vowed to cure --at first, of course, I didn't want him to touch me, but eventually I overcame that --I was still in high school, and stopped speaking altogether --should I be unfriended for this?

--not that Facebook "friends" are "friends" in any other context, but they're still called "friends" --and seems to me that carries some responsibilities.  What would it take for me to "unfriend" someone? --Maybe I'd do this to escape more parts of high school, a regrettable time of my life --the ruptured aneurysm purged my brain of quite a bit of short term memory keeping --I'm not yet as bold as Beth (though I did "like" her page, and am following it) --I can't yet state what I'm saying and feeling (don't quite have the "Moxie", I suppose; but I can't yet state what I have to say without the protection of (pretty much "rapist-free) physical space --I do indeed remain hungry --perhaps just for a chance to live those years again, and do things I didn't do, and so things I did differently --your post Blog Woman, has enabled me to say this! --thank you so much...

But friending and unfriending has become so easy --as it is for liking and unliking things --strange that there are no other options...

So many forms of scars! --your post is a form of scab! --healing occurring underneath! --healing occurring!

Amrican Indian College Fund

Hope on the Rez

Snacks or full meals! --eat, consume, and help Native Americans! 

Thank you!

Antonio Mora blog and my Moxie Supper blog

Share a link on Twitter!

enjoy those --partial-- as they must be. "meals"

Lucretius of puddle wow!

This is what Thylias Moss had to say about, in a nutshell, existence as a collaborative venture, about a shallow puddle being able to reflect the depth of an atmospheric ocean, about a partnership between compression and expansion, each taking the other into itself apparently simultaneously, perception determining which parameter dominates --the partnership is a flaw perhaps, an accident perhaps, my own weakness for the idea, but it functions well (my perception) as a source, somehow, of possibility:

POET'S PICK APRIL 5
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
Selected by Thylias Moss
National Poetry Month 2007


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Thylias Moss's Poetry Month Pick, April 4, 2007
from On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura), Book One
(with some reference in my comment to a passage in Book four)
by Lucretius (c. 99 - c. 55 BCE)
as translated by Anthony M. Esolen

Now it's clear that nothing can be limited
Without something beyond for boundary, some
Point beyond which our sense can't follow it.
But you must admit that nothing exists beyond
This All; therefore it has no limit, no end.
Nor does it matter in what place you stand:
Take any point you like—you leave the whole
Unbounded in all regions equally.


A few lines later, this comes:

…I’ll follow you then; wherever
You place the shores, I ask, "What of the spear?
Where does it fly?" No end can be established;
Immensity prolongs the flight forever.


A passage that has followed, as has the other, this:


There's more: Nature dissolves all things into
Their atoms; things can't die back down to nothing.
…Never can things revert to nothingness!




Thylias Moss Comments:

How tempting to believe in innovation, in the poet making something new—I have needed this delusion myself, have in fact built something I dare call a "new literary paradigm" on the possibility of the new, yet one of the ancients had already made clear (in Latin) that "as all words share one alphabet, many things may be made from the same atoms," must be made from the same particles, hinting at some irreducible particle that exists in a finite number of basic forms, these combining to make all else, infinite variety within limits established by the nature of these particles, so human beings will not (in initial birth form) become an Andean peak or a pack of flamingos dancing in one of the rivers, perhaps a sulfurous one, at the feet of the Andes though some humans may do an

Irish step dance in which the legwork seems to invent the flamingo ritual pack dance again—could it be that certain patterns are inevitable given the close relationship between all stuff? We're made of elements repeating throughout an immensity available on every scale, Lucretius instructing his readers to venture to the shore, to the limit of existence and from that shore to throw a spear that will still travel away from the thrower, will still

have somewhere to go, every somewhere a candidate for the center in a totality that is necessarily endless if it is indeed an all, and if endless, then centerless, as much space in every direction from every point. Wow. And looking, he says, into a puddle seemingly shallow gives access to a depth, to an infinity as immense as the celestial one that the puddle is able to hold. Wow2 (superscript in the original message) and Wow2 (subscript in the original message).

So beginning with any of these points, taking any point as a nucleus, and increasing distance from it while maintaining that speck as the center, eventually, the periphery embraces totality. And that is the powers of ten, an Eames film I saw in Chicago, the stills from the film that I have as a flipbook, the book about the size of things in the universe that I have taught when I invented a literary theory that caused me to seek that which could give my new point credence. I have reinvented something ancient, it turns out. I participate in one of the inevitable patterns, am part of a chain of observing the limits and joys of the senses, the logic and marvels suggested by

consideration of scale. And I am comforted by Lucretius' love of what I consider lovable paradox, to be both bound and unbound, both finite and limitless. And I am comforted by Lucretius saying that recycling is the nature of things, not waste. There is no throwaway stuff (including ancient texts—how I need Lucretius!) for stuff breaks down into basic units that are then free to form something else, to be part of something else that can also be the center of everything, and by extension, exist in some form for as long as there is totality, as long as there is existence as both the container and the content.

This is how to live, and it has been the way to live at least since Lucretius. From the center where I (re)configure a way to make whatever forms are possible out of various components; from this center, I arrive at a totality that as it widens away from my ideas embraces Lucretius, his part larger for being wider—but my idea therefore a
candidate for potency, for being a distillation: a potent drop at a present end of the funnel. I cannot resist another Wow!



About Thylias Moss:
Thylias Moss is the author of eight previous volumes of poetry. Her Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler was a National Critics Book Circle Award finalist, and was named by the Village Voice as one of "Our Favorite Books of 1998." A 1996 Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and a recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, Moss has received grants from, among others, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Kenan Charitable Trust. She is Professor of English and Art & Design at the University of Michigan.


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Here's another take on Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler:

Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler
by Thylias Moss
(Persea Books: 1998) Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler is Thylias Moss's sixth book, her first after grabbing one of the MacArthur genius grants. Her work has changed -- moved further out, encyclopedia-ized. She has memories of playing jacks sans hands, Thalidomide-esque, but all it is is nose-sucking, all it is is the end of the world. The Brothers Grimm, Zora Neale Hurston, Amy Clampitt, Stanley Crouch: this is a thin volume, but spectacularly dense, provocative (is her cheating poem about Lazurus “cheating” death? or her and her husband's affairs?). To read her Susan Smith / baptizing poem is to be horrified -- yet, as Moss posits, 'tis poetry's job. The long, more formal open-field works, particulately “Advice,” “Sour Milk,” and the title poem, all break new ground. I want the book! I want the movie! paperback

          Bob Holman

And here's an opportunity to view without leaving this page, flamingos and Irish step dancers in parallel movement in proximity:





(I'm relying on movement clips available on you tube though had flamingos and Irish steppers been filmed to show the parallels, similarities would be more intense courtesy the exaggeration that accompanies focus --even so, groundwork, the root of the link is here.)
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It is possibility that I want, and it is possible for me to imagine as many possibilities as I'd like to

--each one a tine of a limited fork, each one also a negative tine, the space between prongs, of a limited fork. Yes, this fork in my hand --further limited for the interaction and collaboration with my hand to access, at best, part of something itself part of something;

the fork that my arm extends by holding it, part of the system of limited fork access; I grasp what grasps. Pasta winds around the prongs, white ropes. I remember my mother wringing white sheets into twists that become, I'm sure of this, the twists of a white turban, an albino hive from which I'd have to extract a very funny honey --I assume that I could not resist extracting that strange, so even more desirable honey, any more than I could resist this movement, this journey from the winding of pasta to rare honey, a destination
becoming inevitable for honey in this nutshell (there are others simultaneously) being cracked here. It happened with socks in The Monday Aardvark of Laundry, and the following video is honey extracted from the larger hive of a poem that, like the universe it is, admits to containing what it contains, some glorious spots, some in danger, threatened and threatening, stable and unstable, the range of real. The structure holds, however briefly, but these junctures happened; the pasta, turban, hive formed something my mind could hold and nurture --that structure ever holds for any amount of time on any scale in any location, though this happens every moment, the moment itself a structure held and holding, amazes and delights me --what does this study of interacting systemsalso reveal? A dependency on delight (perhaps why there is, as
Joel Brouwer puts it in his review, an "allergy to editing," which happens, which is inevitable, Joel, erosion, variables and forces that nudge stable systems toward instability, unstable systems towards instability. While this dies, this thrives. Multiple locations of simultaneous activity [not synchronized necessarily]. That is the footprint of a landscape of existence. A landscape to which I hope to be true (as I perceive that, perceptions updated as often as I become aware that updates are necessary, though probably not often enough). Here is a model of a landscape of existence worth trying: John Conways' Game of Life).




Some of the mappings of the Tarzan Holler, of the Tokyo Butter can be (forms of) brutal, won't avail themselves of a certain kind of denial, do not boost certain kinds of reputation above attempts to perceive better the irregularities and all, her own too, the ordered messiness of movement, of existence that seems to be going somewhere, a point of movement, a rejection of pointlessness, mindless wandering (the mind indeed! --please, if you have a mind to, refer to My Neurological Winter).






- Posted using BlogPress from my Limited Forked iPad

Location:Everywhere in the universe!

World Hunger

Hunger is a major problem in the world. Many are hungry without awareness from parts of the world where food seems not to be a problem, is even thrown away without anyone attempting to consume it. Parents --or rather-- my mother would tell me to think of the starving children in Africa,as if that would make me clean my plate.


The Huffington Post reports Hillary Clinton as saying this about hunger.

This morning, one billion people around the world woke up hungry and tonight, they will go to sleep hungry. This issue has not gotten the attention it deserves, and it is a personal priority of mine and of the Obama Administration to address the challenge of chronic hunger with a very high level of focus and dedication.

Hunger is not only a physical condition. It is a drain on economic development, a threat to global security, a barrier to health and education reform, and a trap for the millions of people worldwide who work from sun-up to sun-down every day to produce a harvest that often doesn't meet their needs.

Today at the World Food Prize ceremony at the State Department, I am honoring Dr. Gebisa Ejeta, who has transformed farming in many parts of the world and saved millions of lives by identifying varieties of a key African crop resistant to drought and specific types of weeds.

We have the resources to give every person in the world the tools they need to feed themselves and their children. So the question is not whether we can end hunger. It's whether we will.

The Obama Administration is committed to providing leadership in developing a new global approach to hunger. We will look to 7 guiding principles to support the creation of effective, sustainable farming systems in regions around the world where the current methods aren't working:

We will seek to increase agricultural productivity, by expanding access to quality seeds, fertilizers, irrigation tools, and the credit to purchase them and training to use them.
We will work to stimulate the private sector, by improving the storage and processing of food and improving roads and transportation so small farmers can sell the fruits of their labor at local markets.
We are committed to maintaining natural resources, so the land can be farmed well into the future. That includes helping developing communities adapt to climate change, which has had a major effect on the world's farms.
We will expand knowledge and training by supporting R&D and cultivating the next generation of plant scientists.
We will seek to increase trade so small-scale farmers can sell their crops far and wide.
We will support policy reform and good governance, because sustainable agriculture flourishes in a clear and predictable policy and regulatory environment.
We will support women and families. 70% of the world's farmers are women, but most programs that offer farmers credit and training target men. This is unfair and impractical. An effective agricultural system must have incentives for those who do the work. And it must take into account the particular needs of those whose futures will shape our world: our children.
These seven principles will guide us and help us set benchmarks to measure the impact of our efforts. We are committed to collecting data, assessing our progress, and when necessary, correcting our course.

Supporting sustainable agriculture won't be a side project of the Obama Administration. Attacking hunger at its roots will directly impact whether we meet our foreign policy goals and I invite each and every one of you to join this effort.

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However, knowledge alone has not/will not/can not save us.
Knowledge includes religion.

If hungry people know more about agriculture, that knowledge may help alleviate some of their hunger. Seeds, fertilizer, maybe even soils may be needed to improve who, where, and how food grows. What, however, will make these agricultural areas sustainable? Does this idea take into account what may be happening? say, if global warming is in progress now? Are not polar bears running out of space to live as they are accustomed to live? in the north, meeting once again the grizzlies that may be responsible for the emergence of polar bears —ancestors of polar bears? The grizzpos, and polies that result from some of these meetings, new breeds forced into existence as the earth warms to temperatures not exactly hospitable to humanity, closer to the ways to was before humanity emerged, eventually to dominate for a while.

How far north will insects travel? Will birds that currently migrate south during northern winters stay in Michigan year-round? Will we take more interest in eating what presently is not considered food? Food is not universal anyway; what's eaten in one location may not be (readily) eaten in another location --I think a bit of Bourdain, and Zimmern
We do tend to be food snobs.

And Then there's the matter of our own star, the sun that will stop shining one day, (not scheduled till long after anyone alive now is gone).