Category Archives: Writing

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A Peace-lover’s War Hero

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Veterans’ Day.  A very forgettable holiday for me.  If it weren’t for the bloggers who have mentioned it, I might have been altogether oblivious of its passing.  I am unemployed at the moment, so no schedule change would have reminded me — except for the fact that the Post Office is closed tomorrow, so we won’t be preparing packages for Steve’ book business.   The truth is, I don’t really know what to do with Veterans’ Day.  I don’t know any vets.  I don’t have any family members who have been in the service.  And I am absolutely opposed to war.  It seems like we should have figured out an alternative long ago.  I’m truly puzzled that we have computers relaying information from Mars right now while we have yet to find an effective way to live together down here.  Learning should lead to understanding, which ought to lead to compassion.  At least that’s the trajectory I’m hoping for in my life. 

It does occur to me, though, that I have been acquainted with a veteran whom I admire very much.  I have read two of his books and have now embarked on a third.  I’ve also seen a DVD documentary about his journey home from Auschwitz.  His name is Primo Levi.  I was attracted to him first because he’s Italian.  In high school, I was the Vice President of the Italian Club.  I was learning to speak Italian because I love opera, and I wanted to meet Italian guys…or at least Italian-American guys.  I finally married a Galasso.  Now that I’m (ahem!) more mature, my love of the Italian culture is much more broad-minded.  Primo Levi’s writing is truly astounding.  He was a chemist by trade, not a writer, but his experiences during and after WWII compelled him to share the intimate details, disturbing observations, and profound insights he hoped would prevent similar events from ever happening again.  He could not let his story go unrecorded, even though its horrors caused recurring bouts of depression.  I think that makes him a very brave soldier and a heroic humanitarian. 

Here is an example of his extraordinary insight:

“Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.  The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.  Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day.  The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief.  The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.  It was the very discomfort, the blows, the cold, the thirst that kept us aloft in the void of bottomless despair, both during the journey and after.  It was not the will to live, nor a conscious resignation: for few are the men capable of such resolution, and we were but a common sample of humanity.” – from Survival in Auschwitz

Thank you, Signore Levi, for your service to all of us through the horrific war you survived and the work of writing your story.

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Carry On…

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I have been reading a book called The Barn at the End of the World: the Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd by Mary Rose O’Reilley.  It has been my companion for months now.  I am reading very slowly, savoring each chapter as a separate essay, which it lends itself to very well.  The author writes about her time with Thich Nhat Hahn at Plum Village as well as her time working with sheep in a barn.  My birthday reading included this passage of notes she took on one of Thay’s dharma talks:

“Koans are buried deep in the unconscious, watered carefully like flowers.  They do not respond to intellectual reasoning.  Mind has not enough power to break the koan.  It should not be answered, but absorbed and waited for in right mindfulness until it explodes and wakens again in the conscious mind as a flower.  What did you look like before your mother gave you birth? …

“At Plum Village, our basic koan is What are you doing?  The answer is Breathing and smiling.  Often I ask a student, What are you doing?  Often the student responds, Cutting carrots.  I say, Good luck.  Now, you don’t need luck to cut a carrot, but you need luck if you are going to get your practice back on track.”

My life is a koan.  My life with Steve is a koan on live chat.  Our relationship doesn’t always respond to intellectual reasoning.  We want to be able to express our irrational emotions and learn about each other from them.   We want to move through adventures and experiences and be aware of ourselves and each other in the moment.  We want to be present, to “show up” with a genuine answer to the question, What are you doing?  And we want to look up.  We’re working on it, and we are truly glad to be doing so.  And sometimes, I realize that it’s easier simply to cut carrots.  And that’s a mystery, too.  “How wonderful.  How mysterious.  I draw water.  I carry wood.” 

My birthday evening was beautiful.  I came home to find flowers delivered — two arrangements!  I opened a bottle of champagne, cooked dinner, listened to music, and let myself loose until I was sobbing all over Steve.  I felt very alive. 

And today, I want to check things off my “To Do” list, eat bad food quickly and hide from my partner.  Is there a reason?

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At Table

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My mother quoted something to me over the phone this morning: “At table, we never grow old,” I think it goes.  I am savoring this idea, thinking of birthdays and family members, extended in geography and generation.  Steve’s sister had a birthday wish in April to dine at a French restaurant here in Wauwatosa.  That finally was accomplished last Saturday night, but as her husband’s 50th and my 50th are coming up next week, we decided that we were also celebrating our birthdays…and then we included Steve’s so he wouldn’t feel left out, even though his is 3 months away.  We spent over 3 hours at a table in the front window of the restaurant, sampling cheeses, drinking French wine, dining on lamb and pheasant and dissolving chocolate pastries on our eager tongues.  We laughed a lot.  We talked about philosophy and aging and Mars and mold allergies.  I was welcomed into this threesome who have been best friends for 30-47 years as a 10%-er…meaning I’ve only known them for 3.  But they like me!  They really like me!  That feels good.  My mother will be hosting my siblings and niece for dinner on Sunday.  My brother’s birthday is Saturday.  My brother-in-law’s birthday is the following Saturday.  I’m sure they will be dining for a good three hours or more, too, talking about philosophy and music and zoology and whatnot.  I wish I could be there in body and tastebuds, but I will be there simply in spirit. 

When a bottle is poured and glasses are raised, when family gathers in the same place year after year, when we face each other in candle light, Time in its immaterial essence becomes irrelevant as well.  Am I 10, learning to sip a drink and taste its fragrance for the first time?  Am I 20, listening to my beloved ask my father for my hand?  Am I 30, looking at my four children settling in next to their grandparents?  Am I 40, appreciating my parents through my own experience as a parent?  Am I 50, holding my husband and father in a deep, inward place as I use my hands, my voice, my mind to embody all of us?  I am all of these ages, and others besides, when I sit at table and nourish myself, body and soul, in this banquet of love.

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Living Inside Out

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Denholm Elliott in the Merchant Ivory production of “A Room With a View” portrays one of my favorite wise characters.  I love the scene at the pensione when he’s trying to convince two women unhappy with their accommodations to take his room which has a view.

“I don’t care what I see outside!  My vision is within.  Here is where the birds sing!  Here is where the sky is blue!” 

He is gesticulating with his dinner fork, poking himself in the heart all the while.  Sometimes I need a good poke in the heart as well to wake up that inner vision.  I find myself feeling bored and peevish, discontent with my fortune.  Why a traffic ticket now?  Why didn’t I get that early bird discount?  What am I supposed to do with myself when it’s 95 degrees out, I’m wearing a tight corset, I’m at work, there are no visitors to talk to, and I’ve got no chores to do?  Why am I feeling so stuck?!?  Because I’m not taking responsibility and I’m not living from the inside out.  I am waiting for the outside world to stimulate and satisfy me. 

And the outside world would love to take over that job!  There are a million things to distract and entertain and lead you from one external thing to the next.  I spent 4 hours this morning at the Wisconsin State Fair, manning the Tourism booth in my 19th Century costume.  A quick tour after my shift was all I needed to grab a lamb sandwich and some fresh roasted corn on the cob.  I passed up all kinds of brightly colored, noisy stuff.  I don’t need a chamois cloth or a giant roller coaster ride or chocolate covered bacon on a stick.  They’re not really going to make me happy.  I want to be satisfied from within, and I want that for my children.  I tend to worry about their fortunes, too.   How are they going to get a job?  How are they going to pay off those student loans?  How are they going to get around if their cars break down?  I find myself getting anxious and peevish on their behalf, too.  But really, more than catching a break, I want them to catch that inner vision.  I want them to be able to be satisfied and happy and enthusiastic about life no matter what their outward circumstances show.

An inner life.  Unassailable, regenerating, like solar energy that continues for millenniums.  Do we even teach our children to cultivate that anymore?  How are we supposed to have a moral compass if we don’t?  How does a nation of outwardly motivated and distracted people develop a moral compass to guide their democratic process?  I wonder about these things…..

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Team Spirit

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The world is gearing up for another Olympic Games.  National pride, sportsmanship, individual performance, athleticism, courage, and victory will be concepts that will get much press in the near future, I suspect.  I like to push out the boundaries of concepts and see how they all interconnect and create a bigger picture.  In this arena, I’m going to put all of those issues under one large banner: humanity.  The Olympics give us an opportunity to look at humanity, albeit through a particular lens, and witness ourselves.  What do we have in common?  What are the responses available to us in certain circumstances?  How do role models give us a glimpse into the possibilities we carry in ourselves?  When I was growing up in the 70s, I would glue myself to the TV and soak in all those “up close and personal” stories.  I found them fascinating and inspiring.  Now that I have lived to be (almost) 50, I have lived some stories of my own that have taught me about being human.  One of those is the story of watching my husband die of diabetes.

Human beings experience suffering; that’s one thing we all have in common.  We can learn information and we can gain understanding and compassion by looking into that suffering and asking questions.  What is causing this suffering?  How does it feel?  How can I help?  The Galasso family looked into diabetes for the first time in 1991, when Jim was diagnosed.  After he died in 2008, my oldest, Susan, came up with a way that we could help those who suffer from it.  She organized the first Team Galasso and walked with 2 of her siblings in a fund-raiser event in Urbana, IL sponsored by the American Diabetes Association.  The next year, she moved to Madison and Steve and I walked with her.  Last year, the entire family gathered in Madison (including Susan’s fiance, Andy) to continue the effort.  This year, the walk is being held on Jim’s birthday, August 26.  How fitting is that?!

Team Galasso 2011

I invite you all to participate in this Team effort by making a donation to the ADA via my sponsor page here.  I also invite you to spend some time considering your part in Team Humanity, asking your own questions about being human, about suffering, about living in a body.  Who do you want to be?  How do you want to live?  What will your life model and inspire?  My youngest daughter got her first tattoo a few months ago.  She chose a typewriter font over her left shoulder, above her heart, to illustrate one of her dad’s most memorable maxims: “Pain is inevitable; misery is optional.”  I am honored to be part of this team, this family of humanity.  I want to acknowledge and include every member and recognize that each one is trying to work out the answers to those questions, even though there are destructive results in the process.   I’ve had mine, you’ve had yours.   We can learn and do better.  I believe that.  Thank you for your participation!

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Adventure!

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The season for Old World Wisconsin ends in October.  Steve and I are gearing up for a 2-3 week road trip.  We have about 9 possible itineraries, National Forests and Parks mostly.  We’ve come to call this “our trip to metaphorical Maine” because although Maine is one of the top contenders, it is really just serving as the title of an unknown eventual destination.  This is how Steve prefers to travel, and he is teaching me to appreciate the spirit of living in the moment rather than planning for safety and control.  Not that Steve is an “extreme” kind of guy, a risk-taker for the sake of it, or anything like that.  It’s really more a Zen kind of thing of being aware of conditions as they arise and dancing with them rather than putting on blinders and sticking to a railroad track. 

We recently borrowed the DVD of “The Sheltering Sky” starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich.  I’m sure the book was better, but the film has some terrific cinematic landscapes and brings up a lot of interesting questions.  Like, “What is the difference between a tourist and a traveler?”  A tourist wants the comforts of home.  A traveler seeks adventure.  I recently had a conversation with a co-worker who talked about a visit to France and only mentioned that there were no bugs or birds and that French waiters substitute Sprite for lemonade.  This guy never thought he’d leave the country in his lifetime.  Maybe he shouldn’t have!

I feel like I have been working on my personal demons (neuroses, grief, all that baggage) and have gained some courage and self-confidence since our last big trip.  I did have one memorable meltdown in a rest stop off the highway in the pouring rain from about 2-4 in the a.m.  That was April of 2011, and we were on the road for 4 weeks.  Here’s a shot taken somewhere near the Colorado River in Utah that illustrates one of the many decision discussions we had.  Do you want to take this road or not?  Why? 

There’s no “right answer” and there’s no judgement, Steve told me.  “I just want to know what you think about when you make decisions.”  What are we here for?  What do we call “living”?  Is it “to be safe and have children and grandchildren”?  Is it “to learn to praise God and serve Him”?  There are a million ways to answer that question.  Steve describes his answer to me every time we have a conversation.  He wants to meet life with awareness, engage in nuance and complexity, question and think critically, try to discover delusion, respond in the moment to what is before him, and participate in the adventure of living, as holistically as he can.  Yesterday, I read a short science fiction story by E.M. Forster called “The Machine Stops”.   It describes a futuristic world where the human race is run by Machine and never ventures to the surface of the earth.  It’s eerie how much that could be the life of modern individuals plugged into the Internet with no experience of the physical phenomenons of Earth.   What kind of life do I really want to live?  What kind of courage do I have to face the adventure of living?  Do I prefer comfort to challenge?  These are good questions to take out for a road test.   I’m looking forward to it! 

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Half Way Around

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Traveling ’round the sun, it seems we’re always half way done.  Imagining the opposites, the contrasts, the dualistic ideals.  If what is happening now is somehow unsatisfying, we’ve only to think that on the other side of the globe, things are completely different.  Somewhere, life is cool and peaceful while we struggle with heat and violence.

If we expand our thinking, though, we realize that everything is…always.  It is cool and hot and peaceful and violent and slow and fast and everything in between.  It is then and now and never and always.  The distinctions and boundaries are simply concepts in our brains like the lines on the map that don’t really exist when you walk the earth.   All is.  Particular conditions arise and manifest particular things of which we become aware, but those materials have always been and always are in the world.  There are no beginnings, no endings. 

‘Tis a gift to be simple; ’tis a gift to be free; ’tis a gift to come ’round where we ought to be…  When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.  To turn, turn, will be our delight; ’til by turning, turning, we come ’round right. – Shaker song

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Interesting Inconsistency vs. Efficiency

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People are inconsistent.  We must be; we’re alive, living, responding, changing.  Funny thing is, in the West we’re often taught that this is a bad thing.  It isn’t efficient.  It isn’t dependable.  It goes against all kinds of Protestant ethics of order and purpose and such.  But in Eastern cultures, it’s often celebrated.  “If you see the Buddha in the road, kill him.”  When the Buddha becomes a monolith, a never-changing dogma, it is no longer a life-giving source. I look to historical information and try to understand why people did what they did for a living now; I’m a historic interpreter.  I keep fighting this penchant for landing on the “right answer”, the one that describes order and purpose and makes sense.  I’m learning more that the joy of interpreting history is found in saying “we don’t know why”.  We’re quirky; isn’t that marvelous?  We change, we evolve, we digress, we’re capricious.  In many cultures, gods were like that, too.  It was acceptable, maybe expected.  But in Western theology, that became a bad characteristic for a god, and immutability became important.  We want something dependable, something stable, so much that we’re willing to construct it and enshrine it.  Why?  Because it allows us to stop trying to be responsible in the world?  The effort of responding is perhaps a constant drain, and we are lazy by nature?  I think of cultures that are resilient, flexible, responsive to the environment, and I think that consistency is maybe not that important or beneficial after all.  

  “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, 1830

What made me think about this?  I was looking into Wisconsin history, and the history of the Upper Peninsula, and came across the story of Henry Schoolcraft.  His first wife was half Ojibwa and helped him in his scholarship of Native American cultures.  His second wife wrote a popular anti-Tom novel in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous book and disapproved of mixed-race unions, thereby alienating her stepchildren completely.  Why would the same man be married to both of these women?  “I don’t know why.”

Bookshelf at the Raspberry School, Old World Wisconsin

I recognize in myself a tendency to try to put my partner in a box, to figure out the consistent rules that will help me predict his behavior.  There aren’t any, really.  But he is hardly a sociopath.  He simply wants to be allowed to communicate his thoughts and feelings as they arise, to be understood in the moment, known intimately for the authentic and complicated man he is.  He is more than willing to talk and reason and explain honestly and even to make promises and act on them in order to gain my trust.  Perhaps it is simply my natural laziness that wants to put labels on him and save myself the trouble of paying attention.  Truly caring about a person requires great effort.  It is hardly efficient.  It necessitates all kinds of little adjustments.   And that is a valuable process, a craftsmanship of sorts.  Which reminds me of this clip my brother-in-law sent me which he titled: Precision East German manufacturing in the workers paradise.  I’m not sure if he was trying to be cynical.  I think it illustrates a very authentic part of human process. 

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Going With the Flow

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Change and the movement of life – flow and motion – energy passing through places and phases.  Here I sit in an old house with the shades drawn and the ceiling fans going fast, aware that the heat index is at a level that prompted my employer to call most of the staff and direct them to stay at home.  It’s hot and humid…but only for now.  This is what my street looked like in February:

I have been reading through some letters and journal entries that I wrote in the year 2007, the year before my husband died, when my teenaged girls were in serious distress and the entire family was in deep pain.  Here’s a list of feelings I wrote about:

depression, disappointment, hurt, shame, guilt, disgust, loneliness, despair, anger/frustration, regret/sorrow, fatigue, pain, inadequacy, fear, fragility, helplessness

Here’s a list of feelings that I decorated with a jagged black boundary and labeled “Off Limits, Not Allowed”:

Beauty, Happiness, Joy, Love, Health, Excitement, Passion, Rest, Pleasure, Peace

I wrote: “What do you do with feelings?  They’re supposed to have ‘a beginning, a middle, and an end’, but when you’ve had the same feelings swirling around you for a half a year, a year, several years — they aren’t just feelings anymore.  They become a way of life.  I feel like Job — afflicted with boils.  These hives on my legs itch like crazy, and I have no clue why I have them.  I just keep hoping they’ll just go away.”

When you attempt to stop the flow of energy and movement and turn your present feelings or thoughts into a way of life, it may seem like you’re taking control and choosing something you want.  It may turn out to be something that mires you in suffering, however.  That’s something of which to be aware.  You could apply that to the physical environment: attempting to regulate the temperature and keep it at a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit as a chosen way of life may cause you to suffer inordinately whenever the temperature is much lower or higher than that.  Aversion and attachment causes suffering.  Letting go of them allows the dance of life to swirl you into new places.  If you find joy in the movement and change of life, you will not be disappointed.  If you insist on sitting in the same pile of ashes for years, you will inevitably feel itchy and uncomfortable.  You can hope that changes miraculously, or you can get up and move.  As Jesus said to the man sitting at the Sheep’s Gate Pool complaining and making excuses, “Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:6)  Do you want to enter the flow of life?  It’s your choice…

Here endeth my sermon to myself.

 

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Enigmatic and Ethereal

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The land is parched.  It hasn’t rained for more than two weeks, and that was just a shower, really.  Clouds gather and pass, rain pummels areas just to the north or south or west, but not here.  Water vapor hangs in the air; the humidity makes the evenings sticky. The ceiling fan keeps up a tinny hum, the slight breeze causing a cooling evaporation on the surface of my exposed skin as I try not to move.  Oh, but if I inch over the cotton sheet, I might find a cooler surface…just there…maybe?

I glance out the window to see if the maple leaves are moving, quivering, even a little bit.  They are still, and the moon is full.  It looks so cool and pale in the dark sea above.  I have to go outside and stand under it.  Perhaps its snow white radiance will bring an icy wind from space.  I invite Steve to join me for a night walk.  I put on just a sheer sundress, slip into sneakers, and grab my camera.  The neighborhood is quiet.  Televisions and air-conditioners keep the people shut up inside their suburban catacombs while we explore the world above…above the rooftops, above the concrete, above the tangible, above and beyond comprehension.  Where we are is no longer “Milwaukee”, it is in space, outside of time, anywhere and everywhere.  We are moving through existence.  We are.