It has been about five years since I started my blog at the insistence of a perceptive grandson who thought his grandmother should be heard. So he set me up on my blog and I have been writing three and four times a week. Poetry, essays and vignettes, excerpts and paradigms and observations. Prayers also for the mystic mind of me. It has been better than half century of serious independent study taken to the books while my half of the world slept.
Like Machiavelli’s letter to Vettori, I put on my evening clothes (which in my case were my flannel pajamas) and went to the study where I sat with my teachers of yore. I, too, was lovingly received by them, where I pestered with arguments the injustices done to my world. And answered by reason what their arguments were for the day. I was revived in mind and attitude and went into sleep preparing again for the day’s events. Like Machiavelli, the starving mind of me was fed and feasted on thoughts designed for the credentialed. I was taught what no university could or was able to teach. And given information only the gods in their compassion were able to garner and assimilate. With understanding of the behaviors of peoples never to be voiced and nor even easy to live with. It brings to mind the understanding of the word ‘expert’ the fledgling grandson in his growing knowledge of new words announced at the table, ‘expert is a person who knows too much.’ And I followed with ‘and has nowhere to go with her knowledge.’
And in the ensuing years I have had many diverse opinions of my writing. From the university English professor who asked horrified if my husband agreed with my views because I brought the heavens down to where I was instead of lifting man up as many male writers had done, and he said no one in his studies ever did what I did, to another who called my views my ‘musings’ and I knew he would never call a male writer’s thoughts musings. To those who wrote to tell me that I assumed everyone had taken my path and saw what I saw. to those women of the church (I cherished their views) who called me an original thinker and one who said I had no idea what I had done and it would take the Jesuits generations to catch up with me. And the readers who thanked me for giving them something to think about when they faced roadblocks presented by altar teachings that nowhere came near the arguments foisted upon them by their thinking minds. And the courageous souls who cautioned me with there were places I would not be allowed a voice.
This is where I stand today in my new home in California on the eve of the year 2017. It has been a run for my money so to speak. In 1985 the first computer came to sit on my desk and waited for me to make friends with it. The first three months of that year had events sufficient for a lifetime with the arrival of a grandmother (for the next 22 years of her life) to our place of residence and a preemie grandson’s arrival and David’s transition from this Earth planet. Little did I know technology would accompany me on my journey of note. It was to be a machine who was a constant companion in my life, a dependable one, where I voiced thoughts and arguments and in time, answered me.
Again I am set up with it in my new workroom and am ready to venture forth with thoughts commensurate with my years. I have grown in understanding, giant steps a son says, and expect others, he says, to follow. Not so I intone, just don’t get too comfortable. Lest evolution stagnate. And wars continue to be fought with ancient agonies and with eventual understanding that we are killing our beloveds. They are one and the same.
As long as I feel I can make a difference I will continue to write. It is important to me that we keep this lush planet as a favorite and important classroom. There is none better. There is no place as precise and that quickly manifests the idea as this . We are her stewards. We must start being accountable.