Category Archives: 7 sins and friends

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Agatize

A long time ago, at least by a child’s time, he starts turning. He blocks things out. He locks his heart. He decides to be happy and do what he wants. His heart slowly turns to stone.

The blood roars through, pushed by each beat, how can a stone heart beat? Not normally, that is for sure. His brain controls it, cold, logical, no emotion, except happiness, that is what he says. He says it over and over, I am happy all the time, until he thinks he believes it. And then he believes it and his heart is stone.

But the blood flows and the body feels and emotions come anyhow. He refuse them, all but happiness, and blood lays down a wall of emotion inside his heart. Chalcedony, lining the chambers, coating the valves, coating the arteries that feed the heart. The heart doesn’t need the arteries open because it is not beating. It is stone. His brain is beating. Beating the emotions away, away, away, refusing the body and the heart.

The heart is hollow. Slowly it is lined with clear agate. At last his heart is full: no more chamber. Agatized, all the way through. When he is cracked open, far in the future, a chalcedony nodule will show the perfect interior of a stone heart.

And where does the blood go now? we wonder. Laying down the lining of agate, clear, colored lines of emotions rejected, all the colors of the rainbow, what he thinks of as impurities. That is how he thinks of his emotions: impurities, to be rejected.

What will be agatized next? His liver? His lungs? He says strokes are the end for his family. He calls it then, his brain is agatized. The part that controls the pumping, overriding his heart over and over, when that part turns to agate, he will be correct. A stroke. How long will it take, we wonder? One year, five years, ten? He says he won’t go past 80. That will be 13 years. How apropos.

Can nothing stop this? Chalcedony is hard, not hard as diamonds, but very very hard. Agates are common and we search for the clear ones, the lit ones on the beach. Almost nothing can wear them down: high pressure would kill him, high heat would kill him, what is left? Water. Water wears down rock.

Enter the sea. The sea of love, the sea of dreams, the sea of the unconscious. Seek help, before you turn yourself to full stone. Agatized and dead.

Maybe there are other treatments, I don’t know.

A stone shaped heart is rare, I hope. See how it catches the light. Beautiful and sad.

August 30, 2022

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hope molting and growing new feathers

A friend away a friend some day
a friend can’t stay all the day
a friend won’t pray a friend can’t play
not today is what they say
a friend they say a friend always
a friend who may return some day

in a way you might say
hope molts and regrows feathers today

I think my inner four year old wrote today’s poem. I am thinking about the song my mother taught me, very young, for when I was frustrated.

My sister and I loved this song and others, Samuel Hall and “I don’t want to play in your back yard, I don’t like you any more. You’ll be sorry when you see me, sliding down my cellar door.”

I gave a young friend a book of rhymes. He looked at me with some horror. “These are nursery rhymes.” I grin at him. “Look again. It’s a book of insulting playground rhymes, suitable for all occasions.” He looked at the book again and held on to it.

The photograph is from the National Museum of Women in the Arts again. Another fabulous painting that seems to fit my theme.

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how to protect codgers

A friend calls me yesterday, complaining that the new Covid-19 vaccine doesn’t prevent infection nearly enough for him to want to get it. He is in his 70s and says darn it, he’d still have a 60% chance of getting infected.

I thought about it and wrote back this morning:

Re the new vaccine the POINT is NOT to prevent infection, though it lessens it in codgers like me and you.

The point is that the vaccinated younger people shed a s–tload less virus if they get it, because their immune system kills it fast. This reduces the amount of circulating virus so that the codgers stop dying like flies. Also the codgers get less sick if their immune system recognizes B4 and B5.

Got it? Get the vaccine.

I am waiting for the top ten causes of death for 2021 to come out. Over one million US people have died of Covid-19. In 2020, there were between 300-400,000 deaths from Covid. That means that we lost 600-700,000 in 2021. If we lost close to 700,000 people, then Covid-19 would beat out heart disease as the number one cause of death in the US. When did that last happen? During the 1918-1920 influenza, the “Spanish” flu that has been traced to a chicken farm in the US midwest.

Here is a provisional and not final list: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/provisional-leading-causes-of-death-for-2021.pdf. Hmmm. The numbers are not adding up unless a lot of US people died of Covid-19 in early 2022. And cancer is higher than it’s ever been and creeping up on heart disease. But these are not the final numbers, sigh.

Here is a fascinating chart: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/lead1900_98.pdf. If you scroll to the end, the top two causes of death in 1900 were pneumonia first and tuberculosis. Heart was fourth. Heart rises to first in 1910 but then pneumonia is back at the top in 1918-1920. I think that the heart has been number one ever since, in the US. World top ten is not the same.

This is not the first pandemic and it won’t be the last. It is horrible. I think that everyone is doing the best they can, though some responses seem saner than others. Remember the old doctor joke about what to do in a code (when someone’s heart has stopped). First: check your own pulse. It’s a corollary that if the patient is dead, you can try to bring them back, but you can’t make them more dead. Also, my latest Advanced Cardiac Life Support class, on line, told me that sometimes I do not have to do cardiac life support. Their example was a decapitated patient. Really? Ouch, doctor humor. But truly, if you are freaking out or want to scream at someone or feel like the world is nuts and you have to do something, first check your own pulse. Slow it down. Breath in four and out four. I can drop my pulse from 101 to 71 in 20 seconds, just by slowing my breathing. You can learn to too.

My recommendation is that if you are due for the booster, get it. And thank you for protecting me and my friend and the other codgers.

No, it is not snowing here yet. But codger seems to be a word for an old GUY. Humph. Would a grumpy hummingbird be a grummer? What is a female codger? I am using codger for any gender, to heck with it.

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mansion of the sky

My mansion is the outdoors. What could be more beautiful than the sky and the sea and the outdoors? Not only does my mansion have more rooms than I can ever explore, all over the world, but it has every mood imaginable too.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: mansion.

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Sing from the sea

This is another poem where I did not know where it was going when I started it. I was thinking about the sea and sirens and singing. My poems go where my heart thinks I should go, but I don’t know where that is until the poem is done. And it’s clearly a song and next I need a tune. And chords. And more practice.

I sing from the sea, from the sea, from the beautiful sea
tied to the mast, you won’t come to me

unplug your ears, unblock your heart
before it breaks and truly stops
listen to my lonely heart
we’ll make music and never part

I sing from the sea, from the sea, from the beautiful sea
hear my voice, listen to me

our hearts melt together like stone
in the depths of my volcano home
you shut your heart down, run away
lava strings like glass, all the way

I sing from the deep, from the deep, from the beautiful deep
small child calling, she still weeps

volcano boiling from ocean floor
new island built as lava roars
small child with faith as adult caves to fear
small child holds your heart dear

I sing from the land, from the land, from the new born land
don’t be afraid, take my hand

hope has feathers, a poet said
in the darkest time, hope is not dead
I morph to dragon, to kite, to bird
your resistance is so absurd

I sing from the air, from the air, from the smoke filled air
vision dark, can’t see where

circle in flight, hope you too
listen to the small child hidden deep in you
a promise is a promise, you know it’s true
I do not give up on you

I sing in the wood, in the wood, in the beautiful wood
five elements sing as all things should

In the wood in the trees
on an island in the sea
in the heart of the volcano
my heart is free

I sing from the sea, from the sea, from the beautiful see
no matter what happens, my heart is free

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I took the photograph at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, a painting by Shinique Smith.

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flight

Cormorant, I think.

About to take flight.

A good take off point.

It takes five years for bald eagles to fully mature. This one is close.

And a great blue heron in flight in the fog.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: flight.