On Being Green

ART SPARKER was looking for things that are green. It's one of my favorite colors and I seem to veer toward it whenever it comes to furnishing our home with a new rug or chair.
In Oregon I find this color almost anywhere I go, and it appeared beneath my feet on a recent walk.
(Look closely! Do you see the metal dragonfly earring I lost? This is where I was soon before I noticed it was missing. It began to snow that day and then everything was covered in 4 inches of white fluff.)
I wanted to take a picture of a little green dress, handmade, that must have belonged to a little girl who didn't wear it for very long. It was in great shape when I bought it at a garage sale.
What was the story that Ernest Hemingway wrote in six words? "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn." Poignant.
I like to think the little green dress (with rick rack, I think) was just outgrown quickly.
I am still glancing through "Your Mythic Journey" by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox. The book is open to a section on "Gifts and Wounds."
The authors say "Everyone alive has received some share of the gifts that make and keep human life human. The giving and receiving of gifts plays a large part in most cultures. Gift giving is rooted in the primal feeling that the world itself is a gift, a banquet already spread before us when we arrive on the scene. Something - chance, God, the trickster, or divine reason - arranged things to support human life."
Then, "Generosity is a recycling of the gifts of life."
And "Wounds are as universal as gifts: sooner or later suffering and death strike us all. The ancients wove myths around this basic ambiguity of life."
Along with me, remember the people of Haiti tonight before you close your eyes, and if you have the wherewithal, be generous with a gift of money for the victims - femminisimo

Looking For Something to Post ...

I WAS looking for something to post and took down the book "Your Mythic Journey," by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox.
A line of text caught my eye: "At least 51 percent of the people in a society are not self-consciously aware of the myth that informs their existence."
There are lots of pieces of paper in this book; rambling thoughts I had while reading it. I came across one set of scribbles that actually went somewhere. I might have been doing an exercise in the book. Here's what it says:
Where did I come from?
I came from a blind date - two people with separate dreams and myths, colliding in a world of joy and danger.
I came from Oregon - the mists, the rain, the grasshopper afternoons of summer.
I came from a small high school with a chance for a classical educations: Latin, physics, literature, music, chemistry. I came from "Peyton Place," "Lady Chatterley's Lover," True Story magazines and Mad Magazine. I grew up wondering what halvah was. I came from "Marjorie Morningstar" and Grimm's fairy tales. I came from Shakespeare and Dante.
I came from Dear Abby, crossword puzzles and early morning coffee with cream, oatmeal I couldn't stand, burnt pancakes on a winter morning.
I came from a small old barn with two cows, steaming in the cold morning, being milked by my father.
I came from a hide out in the scotch broom where I left my copy of "Alice in Wonderland." I never found the book again and to this day believe it was taken by the White Rabbit.
I came from a spring strawberry field on a steep hill. I would lie in the row with my head pointed down the hill, staring at the clouds in the sky.
I came from a house cluttered with the clothes and belongings of seven people.
I came from a family that had dinner every night at 4 p.m., listened to Walter Cronkite, watched "The Honeymooners" and Ed Sullivan, went to the beach often and sat in the car looking out at the rain and the ocean.
I came from a family that laughed, shouted, cried and worried.
I came from love - femminismo