Draughting

unhampered by outcome
the vanishing line becomes
freedom for new
perspective &
dimension.

uninhibited by form
the mind flows toward
the vague and distant
presence,
seeking coalescence.

unencumbered by conformity,
the spirit gathers itself
for omni-linear
exploration &
expansion.

uninhabited,
the foreground
represents every
convention
left behind.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Scorecard for the Coach

Dear Coach,

Now that the season is well and truly over, I thought you might like a little feedback.

Training: I thought you and the other coaches provided good solid training, with kindness and humor, and I thank you for that. The boys could have used more batting practice. And less rain.

Communication: Well, sometimes the messages came late. (Yeah, we don't blame you for that one that never came. Everyone has a bad day.) Would have been helpful if specific times could have been mentioned. “Have your boy on the field at 3pm” doesn’t seem like too long a message to get the point across and avoid confusion.

Timeliness: When you say that you will hold players to being on time, it is good to be there to meet them at the appointed times, once these have been adequately communicated.

Strategy: Particularly when the season has gone so badly, why not shake things up and try kids in different positions? To keep with the same playbook, even and especially when it is not working, is why the government is failing our nation.

I know that you don’t have to care about this, your job is over for the season and you may never see my son again, but here’s the thing: my son never played baseball before last year. He started out in AA division with no experience. By the end of the season, he was one of the more valuable players on his team, which came in 4^th. He was regularly playing the infield at third, shortstop and second. As a batter, he was pretty good, for a newbie; more importantly, he has a good eye. As you know, when he gets on first, he is quite a base thief. He went on to play Berkeley Summer League, and his team, which started out having to forfeit games, because they did not have enough players on the field, came from behind to play the championship game, and come in 2^nd. Again, he played infield. Quite a result, for a boy who had never played any sport before. 

Because my son was given so little play time this season, and in a remote part of the outfield, he had little opportunity to hone any of the skills he had acquired last year.

My boy is no superstar, but he is a solid and consistent team player. Burying him in right field, when your infield was consistently so piss poor, was a crime. My son kept coming home saying “I wish I could help my team where I play well.”


We thought jumping to Majors was a stretch, and almost tried to hold him down to AAA. But we thought the older boys would help pull the younger ones along, and that he would get valuable experience. HA! What a joke! We’ll never make that mistake in judgment again (now that the situation will never recur). We should have said something, but were trying to follow the rules and not interfere. As it was, we don't know if it was a stretch or not, because he really wasn't tested.

Minimum Play Rule: B.S. ('Nuff said.)

Injured Players: What kind of tomfoolery is it to rush injured batters onto the field? I don’t care how valuable that player is, you invite aggravation to the injury, even further injury, and compromise the competence of your defense. Why can't they warm the bench and rest for an inning, to come back fresh later?

Sportsmanship: I never saw a group of boys with such a bad attitude. The older ones, who bragged about their ability especially when they did not deliver the goods, blamed the younger kids for their own errors. Sad commentary. My son was blamed for the loss of many games, even when he had been sitting on the bench while all the mistakes were being made on the field. Cute. Meanwhile, when he tried to be encouraging to teammates from the bench, he was rewarded with derision. I had to give him pep talks after every practice and every game. He was doing his part; where were the others in this thing called team effort? 

Responsibility. Sportsmanship. Courage. Character. Isn't that supposed to be part of the Little League experience?

The interesting and unique thing about the human species is that it takes 20 years to nurture an individual to full adulthood. The critical thinking function of the human brain is not capable of development until an individual is 20-22 years of age. There are a lot of bipedal animals roaming the streets of America because hundreds of thousands of adults turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the behavior of young people, and decided it is not my job to teach them what is right. But you and I know it takes hundreds and thousands of teachers, over an entire lifespan, to form a good, solid human being—one who has a good character, self-control, self-esteem and compassion.

In conclusion, I hope my son will shake off this disappointing experience (on so many levels) and want to continue playing. I hope he will decide to tryout again next Spring. And, just so you know, it does not matter to us that the team didn't win! Sure, they could have done better. My boy knows it is not about winning. He knows it is how you play the game when you show up at the field. That is what we have taught him about life. (Too many people have the mistaken notion that life is about winning. But life is really about living, isn't it?)

Maybe, next year, my son will have a real opportunity to play.

Best of luck in your future endeavors.

The Legacy of Time

It has been interesting, over the course of the past few years, to see the downfall of some of our politicians over their sexual infidelities. Here is a partial roll-call:

Newt Gingrich

John Ensign

John McCain

John Edwards

Gary Hart

Jim McGreevey

Elliot Spitzer

Gary Condit

Rudy Giuliani

Mark Sanford

David Vitter

Bob Livingston

Mark Foley

Jesse Jackson

Barney Frank

Tim Mahoney

Mike Duvall

Gavin Newsom

Arnold Schwarzenegger

… and many, many more!

Notice anything about the list? No, they are not all Republicans… They are all MEN! Power is, evidently, an aphrodisiac. Power also seems to provide access to a wider range of folks than one might find at home.

It is interesting that one doesn’t see women politicians similarly implicated. Perhaps this is because the field of female politicians is smaller than that of their male counterparts. It has also been suggested that female power is a turnoff to men; that may well be true.

What I find interesting is that all these folks are involved in policy making, and a lot of the time, while they have talked about family values and morality, the policies they have advocated do not support families, family life, children, or the environment. And then we find out the truth of their family values and moral fiber.

We elected these men (perhaps they should no longer be called gentlemen), sometimes based on speeches made during campaign tours, posing with spouses and children. Like homes that are professionally staged before being put for sale on the market, this is an advertising ploy. And we fall for it, in a big way… in fact, almost every time. Part of the “marketing” and “packaging” of a candidate is called Moral Credentialing, whereby a person establishes (or has established for him) a moral image. Once someone (male or female) has an established moral image, studies have shown that person may subsequently feel free to behave less ethically.

Now, let’s take a look at religion for a moment. Here again, there are a lot of men at the top of the heap of religious leaders. Many of these leaders have helped to maintain male domination over women in matters of work, culture, politics and religion. There seems to have thousands of years of mythmaking around the notion of a male god who created everything at the beginning of time. This, even though it is clear that there were ancient female divinities. Future generations, moving forward from the beginning of time, of male leaders were evidently turned off by the idea that feminine power could create, and so these ancient myths about female divinities were hijacked or obliterated, as far as possible.

Many people don’t realize that a universal element in creation stories is family. Everything may have been created by something divine (female or male of inclination, or both), but after that, there are children who procreate. We are a human family, however it was our species was created and has evolved—and isn’t it interesting that most of the stories have humans listed as the last of the creations?

Life is about family, revolves around family, promotes family. God should be firmly about family and about life, shouldn’t it?

Yet, we continue, as humans, to be embroiled in the constant need, even desperate desire, to have pecking orders and supremacy and authority and control over others (whomsoever others may be). And, I hate to say it, because there are a lot of terrific fellows out there, but the major players in this are men.

There is this moral image being pushed at us all the time, and over it is superimposed the false notion that the Divine is male only. To which I reply, if the Divine had been male, rather than female or even androgynous (which circumstance does appear in some creation myths), then why would there be the any need at all for female energy? If the male energy were so important and so special, why create two genders?

But, ladies, I'll let you in on the joke. The men can't handle the awful truth that women bear the children. Men can talk any kind of game they want to about creation and about the divinity being male, but they cannot change the fact that women bear the children and women hold the family together.

Women bear the legacy of time. Men have never been able to compete with that.

Maybe if men start getting pregnant, the landscape of things will change. I don’t see this happening, in either the foreseeable future or beyond.

But here is another question: What if the Divine were male and as unfaithful as some of our politicians and our religious leaders have been? Would or should anyone follow an unfaithful god? Taking it farther, would or should anyone follow policy made by unfaithful leaders? Further, should nice people (men or women) follow unfaithful men (or women)?

If the answer is not clear, then there is something wrong. 

Meanwhile, a better focus for one’s attention and energy might just be the notion that human beings, male and female, were created to be. The human family universal ought to honor the family, in all gender presentations and combinations, and in all children. Why? Because family is the evidence of the continuance of life, and life is the Holy Divine (male and female and neutral), from generation to generation. Family is the most inclusive group in the world, not that that always makes it an easy group to be in—but the point is you cannot choose your family; you come into it, whether it is your nuclear family, your community family, your regional family, your continental family, your world community. However you got here, you came into this world—to be—and wherever you are in this large picture, you have a place and a role to fulfill within this family, and that is holy!

I firmly believe that if we, as a species, could have faith in our human family as evidence of the sacredness of life, the landscape of attitudes, ethics and morals, religion and politics would truly change. Who knows, some of it might be rendered useless and go away forever. And wouldn't that be nice?

Meanwhile, the end of the world is supposed to happen on Saturday.

But, this is the way of enlightenment: I will be among the cleanup crew on Sunday.

(sigh)

Someone has to bear the legacy of time.

Meditation

In the dream that opens
from inward out
the heat of the day
cools all possibility of thought
like a sudden rain in the garden
falls upon the printed page
rendering the imprinted characters
a sodden and murky pulp mural
that tells me nothing now
if ever it did

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Songstress

Never had there seemed so many hours
as lately there had been, like flowers,
all requiring music, by turns and towers.

The map of the head of the point
is convoluted,
possibly even polluted,
but in any case, inside out,
so a call came in from the tenor section,
requiring the sort of response,
by way of melodic line,
from one tonality to another,
or at least to the needed destination.

This, but one line in a fugue,
muddy, and instrumentally Moog,
guiding arrivals and departures
for all the birds of the sky,
as well as the cleanups, nigh,
of their minor mishaps,
evident all over the tarmac.

The phone rings again,
introducing yet another part,
and so the counterpoint thickens, thins
waxes and wanes into a sticky wicket thicket
—Ah, only a desperate sales call;
they had tried a dozen times before,
but perhaps the thirteenth time
will be the charm,
and the hapless caller
thinks to disarm
my brain.

Meanwhile, the music unravels
into a rubble-like rumbling gravel,
and seeks to go bounding along,
like a steam calliope,
to the circus,
as if that is truly
what should happen next.

From her cheeks to her hair,
the flames rise beyond care,
threatening to set curtains alight,
not to mention the folded laundry,
but thankfully in time to warm the dinner,
hopefully before the call goes out,
not at all for the fun,
to 9-1-1.

Please quell the flare,
and give this songbird flight
from the musical madness
of chairs in pairs,
lines and signs;
find resolution on your own,
ye dogs, cats, cars, cans and kin!

This girl needs a biscuit, some flan,
and a warm, soothing tisane.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Working Well With Others

My children are working on a collaborative construction project, in their respective classes. The class is divided up into working groups of students, each of whom has been assigned one or several roles in the assignment: to design and construct a load-bearing bridge with toothpicks. The assignment sounds like a lot of fun, and a chance to work with a real-life construction project on a small scale and with a hypothetical budget. Once the projects are complete, there will be a contest between the classes, for best- and greatest-load-bearing design.

My daughter was complaining to me that the child on her team who is supposed to be engaged in management and oversight, in addition to make sure that the “job site” is clean and “safe” has been shirking these responsibilities. Normally, my daughter would just shrug and make sure things were handled, but in this case, two other team members have been out. So, in essence, my daughter feels she has been carrying the project, and she told me it seemed unfair.

She said that she had tried to communicate to the person in question, only to be put off or growled at.

I had to laugh.

How frequently do we find, in our lives, in our lives, that gate keepers, managers, people entrusted with the work of oversight and management seldom live up to their job descriptions or pay?

How often do we try to keep it all going, on our own?

How much stress does this add to our daily lives?

Does this affect our love of work?

Cooperative effort requires team players. Teachers in our schools work hard to teach our children to work together in problem solving. What do we adults model? Do we model best practices in the areas of cooperation? Or will it be marked on our life report card: “doesn’t work well with others?”

I suggested that my daughter speak to a higher authority about her grievances, namely to her teacher. I even advised seeking arbitration.

“Well, I don’t want her to get in trouble; then she’ll really get mad at me.”

I then suggested that I would make some small signs, to put into the hands of some action figures. The plan would be post the action figures around “the job site,” as if there was a strike picket line. The signs would proclaim:

                  “MANAGEMENT UNFAIR TO LABOR!”

My daughter was appalled. “Oh, MOM! That is not going to stop her!”

I said, well, perhaps not, but it would bring public attention to a situation that really comes up in the world of work. Such events can even delay or shut down projects.

“You just want to embarrass me!”

“No, I want to embarrass her into doing what she is supposed to do,” I replied.

“Ah, mom.”  She dismissed this entire notion as being ridiculous.

“If you don’t talk to your teacher tomorrow, the action figures hit the picket line on Friday!”

“Mom, you have no respect for me!”

“I have every respect for you, and your best interests at heart—you are a laborer and you are being oppressed by management!”

“Hmph,” she said, “well, maybe you should have a little less respect for me…”

Forest or Trees

Deeper into the forest of books go I,
but less seem to learn of them;
the thickets of words, veritable mazes,
of which depth is oft proclaimed,
soon wear out their glib welcome
and inevitably thin to the same weedy patch,
wet and reedy, murky and muddled,
that I have explored before
--but I desire more.

The in-depth studies, the colorful analogs,
the structured cases resemble less
the actual beauty of the forest or the tree
--and I desire more.

The universe smiles wearily at my dilemma,
the untamed wilderness yawns lazily at my feet,
and the wild unknown beckons me toward its reality
--and I desire its shore.

Didn't she know? they sigh, sharing their inward smile,
experience trumps book-learning, every time;

Desire, bared upon the open shore,
shall most surely find more.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen