I AM ASTONISHED

I realize that I am not going to die very soon because I feel so energetic.  Therefore, I am ending my blog, We who are about to die etc.  Instead I intend to get in touch with other people who are interested in two books that have captured my soul and heart:

1)    The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, M.D., Penguin Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-670-03830-5

2)    THE GUARDIAN OF ALL THINGS: The Epic Story of Human Memory by Michael S. Malone, St. Martins Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-312-62031-8

 

I asked a beloved and knowledgeable friend how to get in touch with other people who are interested in those books and he said I should  use Facebook.

 

So farewell to you not because I am dying but because you won’t see any more blogs from me.  Good luck or blessings whatever works for you.

Love, eve

 

 

 

 

Why is a good librarian like an angel?

 

I don’t believe in angels with feathered wings, anymore more than I believe in the Devil with cloven hoofs and a pointed tail. 

Imagine for a moment meeting a gorgeous angel.  It would be so exciting! I would like to ask personal questions, “How did you get where you are?   What happened to you to make you an angel?”  The angel just wants to help me to achieve what I can do.  A good librarian is the same way.

I live in a retirement community where a bookmobile from the library comes once a month.  The librarian, Neal Denton,  is a marvel because he finds mind-blowing books for me that I would never have ordered by myself.  For example, he gave me a thrilling book; The Brain That Changes itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, M.D.[1]  It tells us about the amazing plasticity of our brains and how to encourage even late recovery with brain-stimulating exercises.

 

 

 

 

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[1] Doidge,Norman: Penquin Books, 2007

Although we were preparing for our deaths the matter of sexual intimacy was looming. We felt that our children would be shocked but they were grown.  They had to live their lives and so did we.  He insisted that before we went to bed together it had to be mutual.  I knew that Gerhardt was cognizant of what he called “the feminine principle.”  He talked about goddesses being worshiped long before the patriarchal gods.  He made me aware that the feminine principle was in sync with the moon, the tides and the earth moving through the heavens.

His love for the feminine principle also expressed itself in practical ways.  The amount of time and energy he put into new clothes for me, whether I needed new panties, bas, slacks or blouses, he roamed the aisles picking whatever caught his eye and holding it up for my inspection.  He was fearless and unashamed.

There was one store in particular, Draper’s & Damon’s, he particularly liked. I had never seen such a store.  It was devoted to women’s clothes, discreetly older women’s clothes.  It was sort of the older women’s answer to Victoria’s Secret.  This store was unique.  We had to go a long way to get to it.  It was in a fairly high-priced mall.  Gerhardt loved to go to there.  He even took an interest in their catalogue when it came in the mail.  He would ask me to look through and see if there was something I might like.  If I found something he would call Draper’s & Damon’s and ask them to get it in the store in the right size for me.

I must confess that although Gerhardt believed in the possibility of communion between the living and dead I did not.  However, I did have a devoted belief in synchronicity.  Consequently, coming home after the emotional turmoil of escaping from a menacing man and having to ask strangers to call a taxi to take me home, seeing a business card on my floor I picked it up.  There it was, the only store where I had never gone without Gerhardt.  I have lived here for 12 years.  I have never seen a business card in the corridor before or since.

The elevator is in the middle of the hall so I had to turn right into the east wing.  If the card had fallen on the floor of the west wing I would not have seen it. We have 11 floors of apartments. So the chance of my seeing that card when approaching my apartment is actually one out of 22.  Therefore, 22 times 12 years times 365 days in a year equals 9,504 well beyond chance   Then add that to other close call I had going to the Farmer’s Market and my friend rolling his eyes in disbelief saying “Gerhardt is with me!”, fits perfectly with both communications after I had a close call.  I am forced to believe that Gerhardt was with me even though he died years ago.

 

I never expected to find a lover and neither did my partner.  We thought that a deep sexual and cherishing love was gone from our lives.  He had a happy lifetime marriage until his very accomplished wife began to have serious heart failings.

She would talk fervently about the love he would find after she died.  She didn’t want him to be alone, sad and old. She would try to discuss an elegant widow or one of her many friends who might fit into his life after she was done.  Nothing suited him.  Finally she fixed him with a penetrating look and said quietly, “I will send somebody.”  Both Gerhardt and I agreed that, in her human form, she would never have picked me because of my odd thinking.

There was another problem to our becoming lovers.  I didn’t realize that I had been brainwashed into deferring to a man that I desired.  He understood that when it came to sexual congress that I had no sense of selfhood. It took him one and a half weeks of talking before I could embrace the absolute necessity of mutuality in sex.  I had been so badly abused as a child that I didn’t know about love without power. 

He believed implicitly in what C. G. Jung said about love, “Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking.  The one is the shadow of the other.”

It was amazing that we, two people old in our bodies felt like sixteen year-olds in emotional longing to become one.  We were two very old people living our lives fully, well aware of the imminence of death. Open to joy and sorrow, caught up in active involvement with the intimate emotions of a foretaste of heaven.   It would eventually lead to a revelation of the meaning of our intimacy that neither Gerhardt nor I could possible foresee!

After Ted died I could no longer afford the rent in San Francisco so I moved to Sacramento because my daughter lived there.  I found a good retirement community.  I keep to myself while writing a novel that I had been working on for thirty years.  But now I know how to contrive a delightfully happy ending.  I was deeply involved with producing it before I would die.

I described my aversion to getting involved with any of the men living in this retirement community.  Against my will, I became aware of a man living there, because he had such a melodious voice. But after my long satisfying life with Ted I didn’t want to become involved with anyone else.

Nevertheless, my whole life was about to turn into something startling when I was forced to rethink every single thing I know about life, sex and death.  I described it in my book, Sex In The Eighties, especially about becoming aware of something beyond humanity.

He transformed me, and just like the plots of old fashioned Regency novels, in the beginning I was irritated by his voice but I couldn’t help being aware of him.  He was told by the other people at his table that I was in another relationship with a man at my table.

Finally he offered his arm to me going into the dining room.  And I took it without thinking that it would change my whole life. 

 

The most horrifying example of blaming the victim is Representative Todd Akin’s saying, “...the female body has ways to shut the whole thing down.”  In other words, if a woman is raped and produces a child the woman is at fault because she should have stopped the rapist sperm!   Todd Akin is firmly in the Republican mainstream. 

“...this war for the soul of America ...over such issues as abortion... It’s not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call ‘God’s country.’”  The most heinous men take refuge in their protestation of God in many countries all over the world to do murder, rape, incest and violent supremacy.

I feel that perhaps modern men are deeply frightened because they sense the end of masculine dominance.  They take refuge in being one of the “good old boys” so they want women to be condemned to inferiority because of their vulnerability to producing children.  Since I am now an 91 year old woman, I can remember that I was among the first generation of American woman who had a reliable birth control device.  The diaphragm was clumsy and a little messy but it worked reliably.

As I wrote in my book, You and the Universe: finding your place in the Cosmos, page 166 – 167

“Freedom, oneness/diversity:

Concerning limits, I find it electrifying that I am  among the very first American women to have a reliable method of birth control.   The significance to all humanity, that now women are in charge of their bodies, is uncountable.  American women are deeply indebted to Margaret Sanger:

 American birth control activist Margaret Sanger fled to Europe in 1914 to escape prosecution under the Comstock Laws, which prohibited sending contraceptive devices, or information about contraception, through the mail.[1]”

After millennia of enslavement to women’s bodies in the long history of humanity, the meaning of this progress in the freedom to choose  wanted children or refrain from unwanted children is so enormous that I cannot conceive what it means.  The best I can do is quote Bronowski :

“In the evolution of any animal there come moments when the species takes radically new step…from that moment on the species is committed to some new way of life – like coming out of the water onto the land."[2]

 

 

 

  

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaphragm_%28contraceptive%29#History

[2] J. Bronowski, Magic, Science and Civilization (Bamptom lectures in America; no 29) 1978 Columbia University Press (page 1-2)

Ted never declared his love to me.  But, I felt secure with him because was he so devoted and protective of me.  He was a deeply interesting man because he had only three profound beliefs:

 (1)             Do the best you can with the tools you’ve got.

(2)             No woman will overcome me.
(3)             He seemed to believe in reincarnation without condemnation!

He didn’t seem to believe in a personal God.  He certainly did not address a petitioning God.  But every now and then he might refer to “The Big Boy Upstairs” so I do not know what he believed in.

After a while, he seemed to understand to whom I referred as GJean, when I said that GJean had assigned me to him.  He certainly wouldn’t argue with me about that.  We lived together for 21 very interesting years. It was never dull living with him, even though it was not smooth and easy.

He had three years at the very end, even with serious heart trouble.  He doctor insisted that he walk every day for 3 miles.  His doctor said, “If it takes you ten hours to do it, just do it!”  I found a very good park to take him to every day.  I would haul his walker behind me while we walked together.  It had a good seat so that he could sit down at any point.  That park was filled with dogs off their leash which was allowed there.  Ted loved dogs and the freedom of that park was exhilarating.

His joy in life continued even though he was seriously ill.  We still had three very good years together.  If fact, when he was dying from repeated heart attacks, at a certain point it came to me that he was hanging on because he was afraid of losing me.  I came to him next  morning and said, “Don’t be afraid of losing me because GJean didn’t assign me to you for one lifetime but for all eternity.”  Then he closed his eyes and departed.