my mother was a woman warrior
I am something of a warrior myself
although I’ve been in three longterm relationships
I think my spiritual nature is to be alone
living apart
I have as little to do with
"the world as we know it"
as possible
I hate this world
I hate the cruelty of mankind
I hate the destructiveness of this
man/ant
this is from the greek poet
As much as you can
Even if you cannot shape your life as you want it,
at least try this
as much as you can; do not debase it
in excessive contact with the world,
in the excessive movements and talk.
Do not debase it by taking it,
dragging it often and exposing it
to the daily folly
of relationships and associations,
until it becomes burdensome as an alien life.
Constantine P. Cavafy (1913)
When I lost that first child....
It was such a crime
This is the time when my husband
rolled over and said
"so get an abortion"
So I was entirely on my own
trying to have that child
entirely alone while trying to
save that child
I had an IUD in place
I went to the top MD in San Francisco
to find the thing and fish it out
to save the baby
I went in for the ultrasound
I laid on the table where I was told
the technician came in to measure
The doctor told me the IUD was not there
He said he was 98% sure
He said, "you must have pissed it out without noticing"
This is something male doctors do with females a lot
Say "you dumb woman you’re not aware of your body"
Two months later I had a pain like a knife in my womb
I had the most terrible sense of dread and loneliness
I lived for months knowing something was
life and death wrong
But the doctors said I didn’t know
My own body
I was on my own
With my God
Two days after I lost the baby out came the IUD
That had been perforating my uterus
and creating an environment
where the baby could not live
Why did this happen?/
Because when I laid on the table
I was measured for an average height woman
When I am five inches taller than that
Because the technician was doing a job
But not noticing the patient
I was being processed
The IUD was three inches higher than where they were looking
The mismeasure of woman
Cost a life
She was a beautiful blond leggy thing
She was born alive then they took her away from me so I could not hold her
How they disposed of her
I will not tell you
We had no body to bury
We were in the middle of Wyoming
That hospital had no incubators
Her name was Alice
She would be, had she lived, 26 years old
After I lost her
I went to the woods of Maine
and lived by myself
electricity only... no running water
My husband went down to Boston
to find work
so we were separated
although we didn’t discuss it that way
In the wilds I began farming
with a scythe and a pick
and my bare hands
I was reclaiming a field from erosion
It was being overrun with alders
I chopped and dug and hacked and pulled them up by their roots
At night I drank whiskey
I lined the bottles up in the gaps in the rafters of the small cabin where I lived
And planned
A medieval garden
It took all springtime to build
a garden in the middle of the wilderness
I made the walls out of woven alders
I made an arched gateway
I planted vegetables and flowers around the edge
and scented flowering herbs in the center
And in the very center
an apple tree
Cortland
and there I carved a piece of wood
with Alice’s name and dates
Who did I create this garden for?
For God
The God who gives life and takes it away
The God who killed Alice, yet made me live on
The God in front of whom my only response was awe
In response to being completely wiped out
In the middle of the wilderness
I built a beautiful garden for God to see
It’s been twenty six years since I lost Alice
And from the very time it happened
Until now
I feel
She was spared this world
She got to advance to the next thing
Never was she hit or hurt or abused
or subjected to the devastating stupidity of human kind
She was spared this round
A round I have to complete
When I lost her
I was suicidal
All I wanted was to follow her where she had gone
I hated this world so much
I suppose my love for this world
is like the love for that girl
trying to save her
trying to help her
these children
against the barbarians
at the gate
but the barbarians are not just those
who make war
but those technicians
who mismeasure life
and in the process cause
so much destruction
Years later my work was devoted
to removing landmines from the playing fields of Kosovo
It’s all connected
So my pattern is
when wounded
I create something beautiful for God
I withdraw from the world
and when I re-enter I recommit
to try and spare others suffering
There is a lot in Christianity
to recommend it
Although I am a pagan/atheist
I look at the war on Iraq
and all that has happened
and I say
"Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."
The only remedy for life on earth.
Is to know what we do.
And the only way to do that
Is the Code of Hammurabi 1500 BC
"do not do unto others what is hurtful to yourself"