Beneth Goldschmidt-Sauer: “Scientists think they have discovered why moths and other nocturnal insects are drawn to light; it’s a glitch we’ve introduced into their evolutionary engineering, caused by our pervasive light pollution. Their discovery provides both an indictment of the damage we have done to our planet and also a tidy metaphor for damaging relationships.”
“A Skeptic’s Guide to Relationship Science” by Dick WestheimerPosted by Rattle
Dick Westheimer
A SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO RELATIONSHIP SCIENCE
Deb and I lay in bed last night skin to skin. I think my hand was on her thigh and hers caressed my chin, maybe thumbed my earlobe like she sometimes does. We talked, again, about “love languages,” how she likes to give little treasures and wants me to be more attentive to her lists. Like today, her cellphone wouldn’t sync. She needs help with it. She reminds me I still haven’t hung Jeff’s picture in the rec-room. I know Deb’s notebook is full of to-dos for me, all dated, some starred in red pen. There are too few checked off. I tap my fingertips, one by one, feather-light on the small of her back. She sighs.
I love
her touch
typing
Today I read to Deb from a new study. “Love Languages,” it says, “are not supported by empirical data.” (One of my Love Languages must be “empirical data.”) She tells me about a conversation she had with our friend Claire. They were walking along Barton Pond in Ann Arbor. Deb recalls wearing new blue walking shoes, the ones she now dons to work in the garden. It must have been thirty years ago, she says. Claire’s man Paul hadn’t read the Love Languages book either.
growing old
we remember
different things
I always wake later than Deb. This morning I find a note taped to my computer keyboard: “Kitchen Counter,” it read, written in aqua-marine script. I’d left the remains of my dinner fixings and now they stuck like glue to the old Formica. We often prepare and eat different meals—mine always with brown rice and beans and cooked greens, Deb’s according to her mood. On the table where I sit to eat there’s a note rubber-banded to the tamari bottle: “PLEASE, Return Me To The Shelf” it reads in bold black marker. As I clean the counter, Deb squeezes by. Her bottom brushes mine, comfortably, for sure.
Dick Westheimer: “The headline, ‘Fans shrug off study debunking love languages,’ was catnip for me. My wife was an early reader of Gary Chapman’s best seller and a believer, and more than occasionally speaks of our differences as measured by the ‘love languages’ construct. Of course I had to read the study! (She might say that referring to ‘studies’ is one of my love languages.) And, of course we both know after 44 years of what Pastor Chapman would call ‘incompatible’ love languages that they are not predictive of a long-sustaining relationship—like the study shows.” (web)
P.H. Crosby: “A response to yet another story about school shooting, this time a story about law enforcement itself apparently frozen, seemingly incapable of acting, just as we as citizens seem incapable of taking the measures needed—and proven—to reduce gun violence.”
Christine Potter: “The story about the plane with the emergency escape window that blew out stayed in the news a long time, probably because we have all flown on airplanes and worried about something like that happening—and also, of course, because the pilots of that flight landed it with nobody killed or badly injured. I hate flying worse than almost anything else, but I do it when I have to, so of course I read the news articles, horrified and fascinated. The whole thing also felt like a metaphor for something much bigger.” (web)
The paper opens at the pressure of the pen and the ink sinks into the fiber.
I almost wrote “welcomes” but the paper doesn’t make that decision. It doesn’t “allow” the ink to enter it, either. Paper exists in its absorbent state and whatever presses upon its surface, whatever arrives, it is powerless against.
Just as the pen is powerless, once the tip is pressed down, to prevent the ink from flowing out.
I almost wrote “escaping” but that seems to imply capability, more choice in action, the ability to avoid, than what is held by pen and ink.
Welcomes. Allow. Escaping.
It’s like Gaza. The people in their homes do not welcome or allow the explosions. Like the paper, their homes simply sit, open to, powerless against, the incursions of missiles and bombs and bullets. Targeted or not, the explosives don’t escape to Palestinian homes.
Richard Krawiec: “The continuing tragedy of Palestine brings daily video of destroyed homes, people defenseless to the ordinances inflicted on them. To the point where the UN just a day ago, Friday January 5, called Gaza ‘uninhabitable.’ Yet, people are powerless to stop the flow of attacks.” (web)
Nicholas Montemarano: “When Donald Trump visited Iowa this week, he continued his longstanding tactic of fearmongering about ‘terrorists’ and people from ‘mental asylums’ crossing the border from Mexico to the United States. My imagination took things from there: How would Trump respond to something seemingly miraculous happening in Mexico? The double meaning of the title occurred to me only after I’d written this persona poem.” (web)
Abby E. Murray: “This poem is what I feel my gut saying every time I wish for peace in the new year, especially this year, as it culminates in more war and uncertainty than last year. I imagine this new year as the mother of our future, listening to our prayers for peace that remain unfollowed by action. She wants us to get off our asses and make the peace we need ourselves.” (web)
