Blowing Strawberries at Amendment One

To everything, there is a season, Ecclesiastes promises. Except in the US, where we are accustomed to having everything our way with immediate gratification. To assure this, we would take God’s rule into our very own hands to judge the living and the dead. We don’t think in terms of building a civilization that will endure for generations or even beyond the next local budget crisis. We don’t think in terms of the cycles of seasons that come and go, the wheel that crushed Hesse, or the eternal karma of our decisions. We absorb mass media input and want to generate instant output.

Ignoring the not yet mid-May date, I bought some strawberries this morning at the local Whole Foods. Knowing that the on-sale California strawberries would be flavorless, I bought local grown pyramids of saucy red juiciness. Their full-flushed cheeks promised me a taste of deep-hearted flavor, slightly tangy with sweet berries blossoming somewhere midway on my palate. They would satisfy the still-feels-like-spring crisp hope on my tongue. At the market, the gleaming mound of stacked strawberries was a treasure to behold, particularly this early in the season.

They stared at me beneath their green toupées with irresistible come-hither looks I could not ignore. They appeared to be the fully-fledged result of hanky panky amongst the bees and blossoms in a farmer’s field just waiting for me to harvest them. I wound up spending more than the cost of two Grande lattés on a pair of smallish containers of seed-freckled darlings. As my tires crunched upon the driveway, I listened expectantly for heraldic trumpeting as I returned home with my prize. I had high hopes for my investment. These berries would anoint our humble house with a riot of flavor.

Putting all other chores aside, I carefully washed them, drained them and scalped off their toupées for easy eating. One of the privileges of working in the royal kitchen is that one must taste test to assure quality control. Alas, berry after berry that detoured from swooping into the collective bowl into my mouth was naught but a waterberry – scarcely any flavor at all. I continued scalping and tasting, hoping I was mistaken or that a miraculous change would occur, turning waterberry to strawberry. Their fully ripe color predicted flavor-smacking sapidity, but berry after berry, my mouth went into mourning for what lacked.

Such is the Christian flavor expressed with the passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina. Theoretically, it looks like a victory for moral values. Theoretically, it should enhance families to work things out and be strong in their love. Marriage holds within it the fecund promise of future generations. But in truth, the Amendment is empty of True Christian heart. It sounds the noisy gong and clanging cymbal of the dinner bell without serving up the fried chicken and biscuits.

While Amendment 1 appears to take notice of marriage, it actually harms many families. Who would deny their sister or brother the loving care they desire and deserve at end of life? Who would deny the value of helping children obtain health insurance? What of those whom this amendment leaves disenfranchised? What’s to become of no-longer-recognized civil unions of all sorts where one has promised to care for the other and perhaps fails to, or worse, abuses the other? It removes the gentle support that society is called upon to offer those who are vulnerable. It defines a society of haves where the have-nots no longer exist.

“You can’t legislate morality,” as my attorney dad used to say. Government is for all the people, not the privileged few. Repeal Amendment 1. Moreover, since Congresses can’t seem to function without riders on their bills, why not add that there should be warning labels on flavorless strawberries? Perhaps it would start a trend for truth in advertising religious and secular.

*

Social media and its discontents

New York Public Library archive (ca. 1910s)

I need to listen to Steve Almond's "The Writing Life" again. That is because I spent most of the day reading up on modernist writers, like Dorothy Parker, partially due to a Facebook posting on women writers who went to New York City to seek their literary fortunes. I also reviewed the Harlem Renaissance and Zora Neale Hurston and dug into the life history of Sylvia Plath. Silly me, I thought by reading about the lives of writers, I would find inspiration to write. However, it wasn’t drinking, depression, dogs, destitution or death that made them writers. It was writing.

What does not die

What does not die is that Michael is dead.

His absence persists.

No matter how many nights I spend

sitting around a kitchen table

with friends

drinking Bordeaux;

No matter that I’ve been to Northern Thailand and back

zipping stop-and-go through the streets of Bangkok

to magnificent palaces with their reclining, Lotus, standing and fasting Buddhas,

Meeting travelers from villages and cities worldwide—fascinating people

with wondrous and tragic lives;

No matter that I’ve meandered through the wats of Chiang Mai and

jumped in with a group of some twenty Chinese residents

to practice Tai Chi

at dawn

before the old wall,

He is gone.

 Tinging temple bells, incense and chanting,

rice festivals and temple-gate dedication ceremonies,

squatting over a hole in the outhouse floor

in a village three-and-a-half hours

by single-lane-switchback, dirt road

through mountains;

pausing to shoo Brahman cattle off the road,

carefully honking around each bend as

our truckload of children and adults

gathered high in the back

like a bouquet of black-haired flowers;

in the truck,

pop-Thai crooners on the radio and laughing

over jokes

made

in staccato

syllables,

 joyously sing-song,

and,

still,

Michael is gone.

 I’ve hiked through the countryside

amongst orchids and chickens,

gazed over vistas of terraced coffee growing

between mango and lychee groves,

lingered by a babbling stream

overlooked by huge elephant-ear leaves

reaching skyward and sideways,

Cowbells softly sounding,

and

he is still gone.

I’ve hiked to mountaintop temples,

climbing thousands of stairs,

"Sawadee-d" monks galore,

Peeped into bat caves and shared panoramas

with friends

and huge blessing Buddhas

and

still he is gone.

 I’ve painted with village children a new senior center

 and photographed

countless cornices, villages,

markets with exotic fruits,

vegetables, and plastic-ware stalls with

 altars to emaciated gurus

 and always

  a photo of the king

 and sometimes the queen,

 seen maggots and other juicy caterpillars for sale

for human consumption,

 eaten fried bananas and black rice with coconut milk

 from a hollow piece of bamboo,

 but the taste of his absence never leaves.

 And I am hungry to rejoin him

 despite the beauty and need of life and lives around me.