Paula's House of Toast

While here in the USA forces are mustering to infuse secular life with sectarian theology, in France a bizarrely complementary attempt at forced secularization is underway.

I'm referring to their proposed prohibition in public schools of Muslim headscarves, "large" crosses, yarmulkes, "religious" beards (as opposed to secular ones) and other visible, outward signs of religious affiliation. Sikhs will be allowed to wear "clear showercaps" in lieu of turbans.

This is a dangerous intrusion of the state into private religious observance and expression, more apt to impact on people that have historically suffered discrimination -- Jews and Muslims -- than on mainstream Christians who typically do not wear particular garments as part of their faith.

What, then, one must ask, is a "large" cross ?

Take a beard: if it is a religious signifier, it must be shaved. If it is simply a fashion statement, it can remain. Same beard, different "meaning."

How will they determine what a beard "means" ?

And if these "visible signs" are banned in schools, where will they be banned next ? And after the signs are banned, will what they signify -- one worries particularly about Judaism and Islam -- also be banned ?

This is not just an extension of our own valuable division of church and state, which prohibits state imposition of a particular religion on its citizens while it allows them free, private expression of any faith they choose. It is an intrusion of the secular state into the most private of spheres -- the body itself and the significant and expressive articles that adorn it.

I fear this lofty concept of "secularization" is a cover for ugly religious bigotry, and that Muslims and Jews are the intended targets.

France deserves all the ridicule and vilification it's getting over this.

Romney seeks a bill to ban gay marriage

"The legislation is designed to offer SJC justices a clear, "rational basis" for establishing heterosexual marriage."

When playing the "sacrament" card fails on the church-state division issue, they play the (so-called) "reason" card. They're not very good at it.

They propose to codify in statute a definition that will provide the Massachusetts Supreme Court with a justification to prohibit same sex couples to wed. This, after the Court's decision painstakingly demolished every "rational" argument against same sex unions and issued a clear and courageous mandate to allow them to proceed.

And what is this proposed "rational basis" that the Mitthead and His Theopublicans seek to codify ? That

"...marriage (is) a heterosexual institution based on child-raising and procreation..."

When DK and I wed in 1987, we had absolutely, as in absolute zero, no intention of procreating. We happen to be of discordant genders, theoretically able (at least back then) to make babies.

Where does this definition leave those of us who are married but are unwilling or unable to procreate ? Where does that place our marriages within this so-called institution of "heterosexual...childraising....(and) procreation ?" If this is a trinity of attributes of marriage, DK and I currently embody a mere paltry one. Many same sex couples are way ahead of us on the procreating and childraising angle.

But the reigning word here, of course, is "heterosexual." Mitt's not saying that "marriage is an institution based on procreation and childrearing." That would, needless to say, include lesbian and gay couples with children. His "rational basis" boils down to "marriage is a heterosexual institution."

In other words, "That's the way it's been. That's the way it must remain."

Sounds a lot like what pro-slavery folks must have been saying back in the day. I bet they even dipped into some of the writings of Saint Paul and used them to support the "institution" of slavery.

Yesterday the Globe ran a full page advertisement by a local "family values" outfit, Coalition for Marriage. The text was wrapped around a soft focus photo of two adorable tykes, a boy and a girl, wonder-bread white, the lad be-freckled in a 1950's Dick-and-Jane parody of cute. They're posed in what seemed to me in my pre-coffee fog to be a startlingly erotic and incestuous appearing cuddle. (DK had already adorned them with horns, pitchforks and pointy tails, making the overall impression even more bizarre.)

The argument -- the breathtakingly specious argument -- put forth in this advertisement is as follows (italics theirs):

"While the research comparing children in homosexual homes with those in heterosexual homes is inconclusive, here is what we do know. Reasearch in the past forty years repeatedly and clearly shows that when children are raised apart from their two, married biological parents, they suffer in everyimportant measure of well-being. Every child living in a same-sex home is, by definition, living apart from a complete set of biological parents."

They go on to list a host of dire consequences -- criminal behavior, low self-esteem, low school performance, physical abuse, sexual experimentation, poor emotional health, lack of compassion, poor physical health, lack of respect for women -- that children who do not live with "a complete set of biological parents" suffer.

To support their thesis they quote studies that looked at children of single-parent situations. Including, presumably, single-parent situations that arose because of domestic abuse, death, poverty. All of which are influences more noxious than a simple, theoretical lack "of a complete set of biological parents."

And, needless to say, none of the studies even remotely apply to a childrearing two-parent gay or lesbian partnership.

In fact, they are using studies that claim to show "broken marriages" hurt children to argue against marriage ! Isn't the more logical conclusion that as many people as possible should marry and stay married ?

A more "rational" piece of legislation for them to be shilling, given these studies, would be a law against divorce.

Jesus went on record against divorce. He never once mentioned homosexuality. Catholics consider divorce and remarriage a sacrament-level sin, not atoneable by ordinary measures; only anullment will allow such sinners to return to the Catholic communion table. And yet the Massachusetts Catholic establishment is not lobbying to codify this huge bit of theology into our State Constitution as a prohibition against divorce. On the other hand they are taking extraordinary measures to lobby -- on the basis of Catholic theology -- for codified prohibitions in secular law against same-sex marriage. They don't dare do the same with divorce. It touches the lives of too many non Catholic heterosexuals who don't want Catholic theology forced upon them. They're banking on a more universal anti-gay bigotry to get their anti-same-sex-marriage theology into secular law. The Vatican's language against homosexual parents -- that they "do violence" to their children -- is heartbreaking, antediluvian and cruel.

The Coalition for Marriage's whole case is an argument by italics or what my junior high civics teacher used to call a "handwaving argument."

It's also an argument that hinges on comparing apples with nanny-goats. Or submarines. They have no data to support their claims, so they import data from non-applicable studies.

Their intellectual dishonesty is simply astounding. Or maybe it's just stupidity. Quite possibly it's both.

It's like rendering a carcass: reason boils down to unstated theology which boils down to something even more unspoken. And ugly.

The last time I worked before my accident was on a Friday in late September.

When I returned to work this week, I found that, for two days, whenever I went to scrawl the date on prescriptions and notes, my hand wanted to write "9" instead of "1" .

There must be a separate little rat brain that runs my medical life that switched off on 9/27 and only rebooted today. Or that went to sleep and woke disoriented.

So, let's see, shall I do some MEDBLOGGING ? Why not !

I looked in an ear today. I love looking in ears. I look in everyone's ears, practically, unless their presenting complaint is so un-otologic that peering in their ear would seem insane and cause them to flee the exam room in fear for their safety.

The eardrum -- the tympanic membrane -- is beautiful. Pearly gray, shiny, round, a little bone called the malleus visible in the middle. It sits right there at the end of the ear canal, as plain as day. Drum and hammer. A nifty little thing. I never get tired of looking at it.

Today a patient came in with an earache. Guy about my age. Fairly healthy. Not a terrible earache. But enough to come to the doctor.

I looked in his ear. 2/3 of the way in, and blocking my view of the eardrum, was a bright white glistening discrete clump of STUFF, beautifully speckled with tiny discrete brown spots. Like this:



It reminded me of nesselrode pie: white frosting and tiny brown flecks of chocolate.

Nesselrode pie !

When I was small, my Aunt Sofie and Uncle Peter took me to New York City. It was wonderful and exciting. New York ! My Aunt, for her broad experience of the Big(ger than Boston) City, seemed glamorous and sophisticated, and my uncle a brilliant and dapper man of the world. Part of their usual New York itinerary was to eat a confection known as Nesselrode Pie at a famous cake shop. This was a grown up confection: I believe I was allowed to look, and perhaps taste, but probably was given a more mundane sweet.

Which made it seem all the more glamorous.

I've never encountered Nesselrode Pie anywhere else.

Until today. When I discovered and named a new otologic sign: the Nesselrode Pie sign.

(Of course I had no idea what I was seeing. I guess a signifier does need a signified. I thought it might be fungus. I talked to the ENT doc. I did NOT mention nesselrode pie. I've got enough of an oddball reputation as it is. He wasn't sure either. We settled on some eardrops and a follow up consultation.)

There is a venerable medical tradition of naming medical phenomena after food. Miliary TB is a diffuse tuberculous infection that, on xray, appears as tiny white dots stippling the dark lung fields. Dots like "millet" seeds. Strawberry tongue in scarlet fever. Currant jelly sputum in Klebsiella pneumonia, and currant jelly stool with intestinal intususseption. Rice water stool in cholera. Peau d'orange (orange peel) changes of skin overlying breast tumors. The classic "spaghetti-and-meatballs" description of the microscopic appearance of malesezzia furfur, a skin fungus. "Fish flesh" tumors. Sausage fingers. Cauliflower ear.

And there is a related tradition of sizing lumps and bumps and nodules with food analogues: pea, walnut, plum, lemon, orange, grapefruit, cantaloupe, watermelon.

In naming our pathologies, we acknowledge that the body is food.

As we eat, so shall we be eaten.

Otto Modersohn, Worpswede, 1903


Her colors are wonderful -- but the form ?
The expression ! Hands like spoons,
noses like cobs, mouths like wounds,
faces like cretins. She overloads things. Two heads,
four hands crammed into the smallest space.
And children, at that. It is difficult to advise her.

I’d hoped the months in Paris would cure her
of discontent, and reform
the less-than-intimate spaces
that riddle our marriage. I’d substitute teaspoons
for brushes if that would turn her head
away from the canvas for a moment and toward my wounds.

Your work lacks study, nature. That wounded
me, spoiled the rapture of her
return. Each morning she heads
straight for her atelier, now. Problems of form
pull her from the unwashed plates and spoons
that clutter the table, haphazarding white space

with jam and stain. What about the space
we inhabit, Dear ? My wounds
open like mouths, but your spoons
just brush their lips. What she saw in Paris changed her.
Nights, in bed, she raves how nature’s forms
slide into and over each other. I clutch my poor head

and roll away. Cold marmoreal heads
of ancient sculpture, the space
in Hayashi woodblocks, forms
and rough intricacies seduced her from the wounds
that gape on the pillow beside hers.
Travailler, toujours travailler. That wretched Rodin spooned

her with the same honey which he spooned
into Clara Westhoff’s head.
My malweiber, paintwife. Her
Berlin cooking lessons, all dithered into space.
She who was my balm now is my wound.
Winter approaches. Outside, the dim Worpswede light deforms,

to shadows spooned on mud, overthronged space:
birches, seedheads, black canals like wounds
she’s gouged in her marriage, faithful just to form.

3.13.99

I have a poster of Paula Modersohn-Becker's Self Portrait with Amber Necklace on the wall of my office. I've had this poster for decades, and can't remember where I got it, or when I discovered her paintings.

She was close friends with Rilke, and Rilke's wife Clara Westhoff, also a painter.

Her paintings are beautiful.

The first stanza of the sestina is cribbed from her husband's journal. He was chagrined at how painting distracted her from the marriage. He was also an artist, but must more conservative than his wife.

She died young shortly after childbirth, probably of a pulmonary embolus. Rilke's "Requiem For A friend" is for her.

So today I resume the part of my life that was derailed on 9.27.

How odd it seems. I am no longer, what was the Larkin line, a "...wax-fleshed outpatient/still vague from accidents..." taking the sun in the park, awol from "the toad work."

It seems out of character to arise and -- exercise. As in physical therapy. I am a sloth's sloth. Physiculture is and always has been my anathema. But change we must and do. ("We must, we must, we must increase our bust" is a silly refrain that occurs to me when I do the stretch-the-red-band across the chest exercise.) I sort of like the exercises. Except for the fiendish little number called "wall angels." Don't even ask. I have a new (and probably permanent) little grinding sound when I turn my head right -- like pulmonary rales, a little kkcchhht. Trivial. A memento. For those days to come when my excellent therapist says "you won't even think about your neck."

So its back on the train, or on the tracks. Or the toad.

Dale at Vajrayana Practice offered some thoughts on the word "unchurched" recently, and got me thinking about belonging.

He discussed the challenges and comfort that being "churched" -- or sangha'ed -- can provide. In Buddhism, one takes refuge in three things: the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The sangha is the collective of Buddhist practitioners, either a specific group, or the wider universe of adherents. "Taking refuge" is a beautiful phrase: it implies shelter and support. It resonates with the biblical "under the refuge of your wings." Buddhism, then, holds the importance of the collective up to the importance of the Buddha himself, and the Dharma or the teachings.

I've been gnawing at the whole "church" thing for awhile. My tradition -- Congregationalist -- is definately into churchgoing. Church suppers. Church bake sales. Coffees. Fellowship.

Catholics claim the term "church" even further, referring to their church as The Church. Christian Scientists have a "Mother Church" -- I'm not quite clear whether this is a concept or a physical edifice, but the connotation of nurture and generation is there.

I remember maybe 20 years ago, during my first marriage, I ventured out one Sunday to church. I picked, probably at random, a nearby Trinitarian Congregationalist Church, not remembering that my natal denomination had transmogrified into the "United Church Of Christ," a dismally corporate sounding name if you ask me. I remember little of the service, except that it was welcoming to the point of being intrusively evangelical and it scared me off. I suspect I'd wanted to simply sit, invisible, in the back pew.

So, other than a couple of funeral masses and a mass at Glastonbury Abbey last spring where I attended a Merton seminar, I've been, from a Christian point of view, unchurched.

I've sat sporadically with various local Buddhist groups over the past 20 years -- but never joined a sangha. I sat for a couple of years on my own, floundered, and stopped daily practice many months ago. (My zabuton's doing interim duty these days as a physical therapy mat and a bed for kitties.)

I'm -- have I mentioned ? -- not very social.

I guess if there has been a theme of the past year, it's been to wonder whether my own tradition could offer what I have found so appealing in Buddhism. Merton seems to suggest that it does. But garden variety Christianity doesn't speak to the question of Being as directly as Buddhism. It's great on doing -- admirable and wonderful, in fact. But one has to seek out odd streams of mysticism to get anything ontological, and, I may be wrong about this, that's just not the focus of the United Church Of Christ.

Ordinary humanist ethics gets at the doing part pretty well. It's the being part, the Mystery of it all, that I would hope "church" could teach. The Word "Christ" to me seems a way of speaking about having a "self" and a "body" that participates in Godhead; this is probably heresy in every Christian church. It could be a shorthand, then, for "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." That's definately heresy.

Plus, in the eyes of The Church (that's The with a capital T) I am an adulteress. (Divorced, remarried.) Big time sinner, me. Hellbent.

I couldn't, with any sort of good faith, recite the Apostle's Creed.

But I felt no such dissonance chanting the Heart Sutra and Hakuin's Song of Zazen the few times I sat with a local Zen group.

I have suffered, from time to time, from church envy.

But, deep down, I suspect that it is my fate to remain unchurched.

A spiritual derelict, refusing against all advice and counsel, to come in from the cold.