beliefs

The World in One Room

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

 

Four jaguar heads stare at me,

Mexican, Costa Rican.

A third guards the mantel,

partially hidden in tropical plants,

attack ready, tail raised, jaws open,

teeth bared.

 

My feet rest on a coffee table

carved in Kashmir.  I look at the photo

of the young man whose family made it.

He took me home to meet his mom,

to the floating market.

Once peace reigned there.

Now I wonder if he is safe, alive.

 

The Hoop Dancer raises his arms,

the Acoma pot exudes ancient

black on white beauty, painted

by the tips of yucca stems.

The Thai Spirit House begs

to appease evil spirits.

I should put food and flowers there;

I never do.

 

Corn plant of life–for Navaho, Hopi,

me, painted, growing up my wall,

blue and red birds flitting through

the stalks, singing ancient songs.

Corn Maiden rug hanging on the wall;

an Isleta Pueblo girl won a contest

with its design.  Four Corn Maiden

Kachinas watch the room.

Corn everywhere–Sacred Corn.

 

Three Ethiopian crosses, St. George

and the Dragon, Frida Kahlo doll,

Argentinian Madonna, Tohono O’odham

baskets, a painted cow skull, Nigerian carved

wooden elephants, including a Chieftains chair,

the stained glass transom window from the house

where my dad lived from birth to ten.

 

In a room filled with windows, there

is little room for paintings, yet–

purple bison glide across the prairie,

an Iraqi woman flies through an azure

sky filled with dark blue birds,

a 15th century mystic, Kabir, tells

a tale in poetry, Navaho spirits,

pumas walking toward me–

my obsession.

 

Rugs scattered–Kerman,

an unknown Persian city, Afghani,

Egyptian, Indian, Zapotec, scraps of old

Turkish rugs sewn together.

 

In one cabinet, Grandmother’s china,

Mom’s Czech crystal–a wedding present

decades ago, Grandson’s painted art,

the silverware Dad gave Mom on their

first wedding anniversary,  Mom’s

everyday dishes–flowers blooming.

I use them every day.

 

These objects–a testament to who I am:

World wanderer, seeker, citizen.

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What’s in a Name?

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Juliana!

Internet tells me I am Jove’s child.

I’m a goddess??!!

Where I grew up, no one had

my name.

The Queen of Holland had my name.

I wondered why?  A Spanish name.

Research explained:

Holland once ruled Spain.

It did not go well.

 

Juliana!

Internet tells me I am

Aspirational

Benevolent

Honest

Inventive

Original

Is this true?

Maybe. Probably.

Does a name create who

one becomes?

If I had a different name

would I be someone else?

 

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Note:  This poem came out of an assignment in a class I am taking with the Story Circle Network, an organization that promotes women writing and telling their stories.   The instructor, Yesim Cimcoz, lives in Turkey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Italy–Sirens’ Song

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

As we drove along the Amalfi Coast, the guide told us the mythological story of the Sirens.  My daughter took a photo out the window of the Sirens’ islands.

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Later I wrote this poem remembering the travails of Odysseus.

 

The melodious Sirens’ song

lured Odysseus

begging to be untied from

the mast.

Even the roaring sea’s

voice whispered in

comparison.

They sang honeyed

love songs to starving

sailors, longing for a woman’s

touch, a kiss, ecstasy.

With knife claws, they

ripped them asunder,

crunching bones, blood

erupting.

Satiated, they sang,

eternal, etherial, deceptive.

 

 

Several days later at a shop in Sorrento, while my daughter was looking for a medusa cameo, the owner, a cameo artist, brought out Siren cameos.  He insisted the Siren’s have been terribly misunderstood.  I wanted clarification but unfortunately other customers appeared and I remain mystified.

We The Corporations

/ Juliana Lightle / 4 Comments

IMG_3487This is for those who are mystified, upset, angry, or whatever else about Citizens United.  Without doubt I learned more from this book by Adam Winkler than I have learned from any book in months and some of it shocked me. It is this month’s assignment if one is a member of the PBS/New York Times online book club.

The first English settlement, Jamestown, was a corporation.  The people who first lived there were all employees of that corporation and could not own anything  themselves.  Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded as a corporation as were several other colonies and Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale.  In the first business related case before the Supreme Court in 1809, Bank of the United States vs. Derveaux, the bank won.  It was the first Supreme Court case which dealt with the constitutional rights of corporations.  With occasional exceptions, since that first case, the Supreme Court has generally sided with businesses.

Corporate and business donations to presidential campaigns began over a hundred years ago with the election cycle of McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan. Marcus Alonzo Hanna realized just how much money could matter and transformed the campaign process.  He created the first national advertising campaign.  This new strategy required money, lots more than the traditional campaigning methods.  Where did he acquire this money?  Corporations.  He coined the phrase, “There are two things important in politics.  The first is money, and I can’t remember what the second one is.”

In a case in 1916, Dodge Brothers vs. Ford Motor Company, Ford lost because of his testimony when he said he had the right to make business decisions in the interests of the general public even if stockholders had to sacrifice.  The Michigan Supreme Court ruled against him, stating that they could not commit to the concept that “a general purpose and plan to benefit mankind at the expense of stockholders” is acceptable.

Although there have been periods of time when the Supreme Court of the US has been prone to limit the rights of corporations, they have been brief in comparison to periods where corporate rights were increased by Supreme Court decisions. The extension of corporate rights to free speech began long ago in Britain.  However, in the US, the Fourteenth Amendment was used in the case of Grosjean vs. American Press Company to guarantee free speech rights to corporations. This case decades ago is, along with many other cases, a precursor to Citizens United.

If you want to understand how corporations have increasingly attained rights, I highly recommend this book.  It will give you new insights into where we are now and how we got to this point regarding the rights of corporations in the United States.

Summer Reading

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

IMG_3957Last year I joined Now Read This, the online bookclub sponsored by PBS and The New York Times.  Why did I join?  To expand my exposure to books I might not otherwise read, to learn, to explore, to interact with others reading the same books.

I rarely read fantasy or science fiction.  This summer has become an exception.  The June choice, The Fifth Season by Jemisin, won the Hugo in 2016.  The other two books in the trilogy won in 2017 and 2018.  I wanted to know what happened to the characters so I read them all.  The spine says Fantasy.  I think they are more science fiction.  Even people who claimed they did not like either fantasy or science fiction became like me and read them all.  This series tells a futuristic tale extremely applicable to events, both social and political, in the world today, how prejudice kills both overtly and covertly,  how fear of those who are different affect everyone, what it costs to live in a world where certain attitudes exist.

It took me two days to finish the July title even with chores, touchup house painting, all the things teachers attempt to do during summer break.  Although I had previously read at least three books by Luis Alberto Urrea, I had not read this one, The House of Broken Angels about a family who lives back and forth across the border–San Diego and Tijuana.  It is a tragic-comedy about the endurance, hopes, dreams, cooking, living of several generations.  His non-fiction book, The Devil’s Highway, is a must read for those who want to understand what occurs along the US-Mexico borderlands.

In the midst of all this, I went back and reread Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.  Wow, no wonder it caused a stir when it was published in the 1960s: a whole country where everyone switches back and forth between male and female and those who cannot do this are considered perverts.  Additionally, the main character is described as having very dark brown skin and those who do not behave exactly as they should or politically protest are sent off to a stark camp where they work in excessive cold and eventually die.

Then I read an article about Toni Morrison and authors who do not write for people based on a certain audience, e.g. black, white.  They write about what they know, what they feel, for a different purpose. One book listed was Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, a fantasy, all of which takes place in what we now think of as Nigeria. It has not one single white character in it.  I kept thinking, wow.  I read a lot of literature from Africa, Middle East, and Latin America.  Most of the time, for better or worse, characters from other cultures show up, usually European and usually for the worse.  Not in this one.  If you go to a book store looking for it, look in Young Adult.  Jemisin’s can be found in Adult Science Fiction/Fantasy.  When I mentioned to someone I could not tell why some are categorized one way and some another, I was told there is less graphic sex in YA.  Really?  I cannot tell the difference.

Next on my list?  I annually act as a judge in a literary contest.  Three novels arrived in yesterday’s mail.  Guess I need to get busy.

 

Practice

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

“Whatever we practice, we get really great at.  If we practice flexibility, humility, courage, we get strong at those things.  If we practice rigidness, ego, cowardice, we get strong at those things.”  Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen

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The Clerk

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

He’s gorgeous!

 

I walk into the department store,

plan to pay a bill, order a griddle for the new stove,

see a bald headed 30 something with a big, brown beard.

He is not what I get.

 

A younger man walks up, “Can I help you?”

Explaining what I want, I look.

Wow.

Caramel skin, five inches taller than I,

obsidian ringlets falling, not long,

cut short to a form a big ball, a glossy poof.

 

He’s not too thin, not too chubby.

Just right.

Straight nose, not too long, not too short.

Just right.

Arched eyebrows, oval face.

Just right.

 

He’s drool worthy.

It’s ridiculous.  I’m old enough to be his grandmother,

maybe older.

 

Do we ever get too old to look, to appreciate?

 

 

A Letter to the Man I Loved the Most

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Today is your birthday, June 6.  I cannot wish you Happy Birthday because you fell into a coma a year and 1/2 ago and died several months later.  Our daughter came over and over to see you, unconscious, eyes staring into empty space.  She drove the five hours back and forth repeatedly.  Sometimes I came with her.

What happened to you?  Your mahogany hands and arms looked as they did when I first met you decades ago.  I looked at the signs of aging on my own; yours seemed so young, ageless.  But not your face.  I wonder if I would have recognized you on the street.  I remember the first time I saw you, sitting on a sofa–fancy, engraved silver tipped cowboy boots, shirt open half way down your chest, and your smile radiating across the room.  I knew immediately I had to have you.

What happened to you?  How could I have guessed I could be so wrong, decades of believing you just left, no explanation, nothing.  Then after you are comatose and I cannot talk to you, I learn a far different truth, a truth that never leaves me, a truth from which I will never totally recover.

What happened to you?  Charming, laughing, the man so many loved.  That you.  Did the other you finally dominate–the sad, disappointed, angry you?  The you few knew, the hidden you, the one I often held, tried to protect. Now I talk to your cousin, the one you forbade to tell me the truth I never knew, the friend I thought I had lost forever.  Yesterday we talked.  Today she left me a message.  She and I will never be the same, she filled with irreparable loss, your company, your mutual love, and I with a hole in my heart that can never be filled because I cannot talk to you.

What happened to you?  A decade ago when you came to see our daughter, it was like I had seen you only yesterday, in so many ways as if we had never been apart.  It haunted me.  You could have told me then, the truth.  But no, I had to learn it by accident from our daughter.  She thought I knew, that you had told me.

What happened to you?  I look at photos of us, young, filled with hope and love and promise, smiling brightly toward a camera.  I wonder how different my life might have been.  I will never know.