A View from the Garden

A butterfly sails quietly over sun-dappled leaves;

barely a whisper she makes in her journey,
but what the breeze sings while it lifts her.

The humming bird chooses this moment to land,
and, with wings stilled, looks lovingly at the world,
feeling a stillness from which to find revel in new flights.

Sun sends slant soft warming rays to caress all cares,
in this, the last flowering of summer's bloom,
known to us as the rosy blush of ripening autumn.

Summer has flown south to make way for winter chill;
the geese have all regained their far distant homing place,
while here the squirrels fidget and fuss over their winter pantries.

Small hands reach forward and up, fingers lovingly outstretched
to belovenly stroke tree trunks and the leaves in their turning,
waving with imploding delight when a leaf offers itself as an unexpected gift.

In this light more subdued, quiet calls one, upward and away,
to ponder the mysteries of our slow yet steady revolutions,
and to wonder why each moment could not be as perfectly serene as this.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Reuse, Renew, Recycle--and make someone happy!

It was a project that started last winter. My portion of it began in the Spring, collecting miniature sewing kits, notions, needles, thread, buttons, thimbles and used pharmacy prescription bottles (washed thoroughly) from members of our congregation. Scraps of fabric, hair rollers, thread, gallons of glue and 4 months later, there they were, 60 of them, and a few extra (just in case).

What were these things? Well, I took all those ingredients (with the help of a few little elves that reside at my house) and turned them into miniature, decoupage decorated sewing kits.

These kits were added to handmade ditty bags, along with hand knit wool caps and scarves, soaps, playing cards, postcards, candy, chewing gum, calling cards and holiday greetings, collected, donated or made by children and adults at our parish.

What in the world?

This was an outreach effort made by members of our church, Christ Episcopal Church in Alameda, CA, to benefit the seafarers on two ships that will dock at the Port of Oakland this month. These gifts were blessed by this morning by our Interim Rector, The Rev. Anne Jensen and our congregation. This labor of love has been handed over to the Port of Oakland office of SCI, The Seaman's Church Institute, and thirty bags will be given by the Port of Oakland SCI Chaplain, The Rev. James Lindgren, to the captains of the two ships our Church has "adopted." The bags will be gifted to the seafarers on board these vessels on Christmas morning. This is actually a nationwide effort that involves churches and other groups, all over the country, for the benefit of seafarers on many ships.

Well, there you have it. A fun little project. Honestly, a huge little project. We were painting layers of glue onto these bottles for weeks. And I was shifting bags and boxes of supplies all over our house for months.

How to make the sewing kits, and particularly such details as what kind of container to use and what the size should be, were fun puzzles to figure out. (My husband thought I was crazy to use foam curlers, which I wound sewing thread on, and wrapped my felt swatch of pins and needles around. It all fits so nicely in the pharmacy bottles.)  And then, you spend the time crafting the items, assembling all the little bits and pieces (more than you imagined when you started the project), and happily deliver them, somewhat relieved that they are all done, and you can finally use the dining room table again. Whew!

About midweek, I received a call from Adrienne Yee, one of the Outreach Coordinators at our church, and also Bay Area Development Director for the SCI Oakland Center. She said that everyone was thrilled with the design of the sewing kits... so much so that they want to make it a model for the nation-wide effort! An article appears about this on the SCI blog entitled The Knit Before Christmas.

What a thrill! You do your thing, offer your time and talent, make a gift and pass it on. You never think that what you are doing is all that different or special, and then something like this happens.

The most important part of this, for me, is the renewal of something someone used and would have thrown away, or maybe recycled. There are many things we use that are needlessly added to landfill. What if we could take some of these things and extend their life cycle of usefulness by turning them into art objects?

A thing of beauty is a joy, and if it is something you made, what a gift! Why, it is bound to make someone happy!

So, I say thanks to the Seaman's Church Institute for their Christmas At Sea program, and our Outreach Commission for engaging our church in this labor of love.

Good wishes and blessings and Heavenly protection to all Seafarers, who labor on ships across the wide oceans and seas.

And to all you crafty crafters out there, keep on inventing! You never know how far it will go!

Copyright Laws: 2 Cents

The function and value and enforcement of copyright law has been constantly in the news--for years, now.

Right off the bat, I will say that I believe in an individual's right to the intellectual property s/he has generated. 

You will notice that I attach my copyright to many articles. This is just a reminder to all, as this is additionally noted at the bottom of the blog. I am grateful that there is copyright protection for my work. I believe copyright protection important to free speech and truth, as well as to the freedom of art.

That said, I believe that the way in which the courts enforce copyright law is inadequate, draconian and inequitable.

We have forgotten the whole point of copyright.

Think of this phrase from the prophet Isaiah (55:8, NIV 1984):

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.

What if the line read this way:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Creator.

Or, further:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the humble author.

I believe that each person is a fragment of a whole of Being called Life. We each perceive the world, existentially, in a different way from everyone else, and therefore have a unique expression to offer (and to share) as we so desire.  Hence, in this case, my blog. 

For my blog is not your blog! Et vive la difference!

I also believe that it is possible, like a layering of the pages in a book, that we are touched by and influenced, in our observations and perceptions, by everything that has come before us, to which we have been exposed. The growth of the human mind and spirit comes about because of all that has been written in the ages upon ages that have come before. All creativity is both self-referential and reflective of the richness of everything around us. Hopefully, we know when we are paying homage to work of the past, and so note it, legally and reverentially, when we publish.

Personally, I will always purchase an album or a book or a piece of art that I want to add to my personal collection. Many of these are artifacts are created by artists I know personally. I want to honor those artists, my friends, by purchasing their work. 

Yet, I am not interested in duplicating what they have done, even if I possibly could. Neither would I welcome seeing someone else's name on a facsimile, or close to one (plagiarists being, by nature, not terribly creative), of anything I have done.

Strange as it may seem, I am interested in expressing my thoughts, which are not your thoughts, nor could ever be. 

In saying that, I also acknowledge that I am unlikely to earn money of any substance from my own copyrighted work. That is really not what creativity is all about. There are lots of lucky folk out there who have turned themselves into popular commodities for public consumption; indeed, into veritable cottage industries. That seems unlikely to happen to most of the rest of us. But, again, I suggest: while this can be a welcome consequence, it is not the point of the exercising creativity. 

I add that I enjoy the possibility of collaboration, as well as the life of my creations moving beyond me (with my knowledge and permission, of course). And so, I thank the several composers who have moved my words off the manuscript page and into an art form, music, that lives beyond print. It is both a joy and a blessing to see and hear the work migrate into another idiom, as filtered through another mind. 

To recap: I exercise my right to what I create. I acknowledge and submit to the turning of the pages of life. I like to share. I enjoy collaboration, to see my work take on new life beyond me.

Can the courts do justice to that? Will the courts protect my rights to my small body of work and the rights of others to their small bodies of work? Or will they only protect the rights of huge corporations, littering case law with judgments against little people, who mostly have no money, for ripping mp3s? Will they protect only the cottage industry, commodified novelist or songwriter who made it big, on ideas of a work from a previous generation, because the novelist or songwriter is now a millionaire, but leave the less successful writers and songsmiths to fend for themselves?

If it is all about money, copyright justice remains to be seen.


Meanwhile, keep on creating, people! Vive la difference!

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Multicultural Center

Humanity:

a plural noun,
naming a species
known as mankind.

Swift to divide, conquer,
label, condemn and control;
soon to be extinct
—unless a maturing
awakens people
from a childish
and deadly
slumber.

Awakening is not a revolution
of wars, weapons and
the spilling of blood,
innocent and guilty,
but is nothing less
than an evolution
to the Grand Opening
of the Multicultural Center.

This is the place
where divided mind
becomes one,
melting alchemically
into a plural Heart,
the seat of universal
compassion.

At that opening,
every window and
all the doors
of every singular heart
shall be flung wide open
to the light of Life,
a truer rite of passage,
so that the living play of radiance
reveals the visible spectrum
of all people
as joined in living
a lifelong embrace
of all colors,
all kinds,
all sounds
of life,
to be of one being
on the Earth.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Far to the West

Far to the west,
a people lives well,
believes they know best,
thrives on buy and sell,
yet finds little rest.

But there is a farther west, even,
and in that unmapped place,
the echoes of our struggles
sound tinny and insubstantial
as they cast thin and painful shadows,
a belying of what could be.

From that far off place,
fuller, more placid reflections and vibrations
find their way to inspire and refresh the mind and spirit,
perhaps even to stem tides of disharmony here.

May those vibrations
meet us in the gloaming,
change us from mindset best,
cease us from mindless roaming,
make us more the earth’s guest,
and guide us to gentle rest.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Of Ballots and Broadsides...

I am a permanent absentee voter. I have received my ballot in the mail. I have voted.

If you are also an absentee voter, and have received your absentee ballot, PLEASE VOTE.

"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right." ~ H.L. Mencken

This election is one of the most contentious I have ever experienced, in all my voting years. Aside from the various candidates who are trying to buy their office, there are some citizen's initiatives that have been written not by citizens but by corporate interests, and there are many attempts at ballot box budgeting in the works. I have done homework on all of this, and I confess to you that it is confusing, as well as contentious--nothing is straightforward; nothing is black and white; it is ALL about MONEY.

"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves." ~ Thomas Sowell (writer and economist)

Even in the small town, in which I reside, the campaigning is as serious and hardball as at the state level. I have received no less than 45 non-personal phone calls in the past three weeks: campaign messages, push polls, surveys and robocalls that are undisguised smears of specific candidates, as well as one promotion for rug cleaning.

In this day, we are more distracted than ever. Politicians and their campaign managers count on this.

I urge you to do your homework. I urge you to see what your party endorses. I urge you to find out what your local service organizations and newspapers endorse. I urge you to carry on discussions with friends and neighbors.  I urge you to read the contents of the Voter Guide. I urge you to read between the lines, with your critical thinking cap firmly on your head.

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." ~James Bovard, author of Attention Deficit Democracy (2006)

And then, I urge you to VOTE! It is your right, and your civic duty.

"Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting." ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt 

Spleen

Herein, I had a brilliant idea, and had been so inclined with wherewithal to work onward until completion of said thought-train, when, of the sudden, the roar of one machine was followed by the roar of another, seemingly right in my near ear, but followed closely into my far left ear, so that both ears were hounded with the founding and sounding and the veritable pounding in the roundhouse of my mind, until the turntable began to melt and then to roll impossibly down the tracks of my spine, infecting the words on the pages of my work and the pen in my hand, to the point that all were melting and rolling over the edges of the pages, into blackening pools of pain and despair at my feet.

The tyranny of machines, pushing us to the nether regions of our living quarters and our sanity. "Resistance is futile," a space zombie said to the characters in the play and also to the audience. Does the machine outdo the gentle rake for speed and efficiency? Surveys and science say no. But nothing shall impede the progress and deafness of civilization!

The resultant black pools of words stared silently back at me, with reproach. Separating them, once in this mood and state, would not be possible, not even with finepoint needle-nosed tweezers, which I would have to borrow from a friend.

For the accomplished pleasure of dispensing noizazy noise and rackety racket, as well as hectares of dirt blown about and abroad, the lawns of the land look lean and kempt, free from the carpeting of leaves and other foreign objects, for mine benefit and convenience--as if I have chosen and ordered such amenity, all over the land--and money is taken in exchange by the prime noizazter, a polite gentleman with three arms, a motor and no ears, who distributes it among his roving team of noizazters.

My work, damp, dark, shredded and pooled irretrievably, further excuses itself from my shaking hands, and what blotchy puddles are left completely drip from my mind--claiming the call of another errand--and move on, pouring themselves through the floorboards and into the ground beneath the house. Someday, they might return, when I least expect, so I had better call in a repairman to fix the sump pump, however bumptiously that work might thump.

Nothing against the noizazters, but their noizaz, with their soaring roar and pounding round and particulate pollution take me away from where I am and even beyond the point wherever I thought I was going or even want to be.

As the noizazters bundle their many arms and motors into their truck and roar away, I say to myself, that prime noizazter,  he is a fortunate one: he makes more money than I do, and is able to help four or five families to subsistence livelihood.

When they are gone, I hold my cleaved and aching head in my hands and weep.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

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See how someone else describes dealing with noise: "Old Bag" by Jenny Diski for the London Review of Books