Searching the net for information regarding the death threats Michael Newdow has received from decent god fearing Americans for his currently controversial suit regarding the Pledge of Allegiance, I came across this story about a man attacked by a deer while performing routine maintenance on his car at an Ohio gas station.

Strangely enough, just yesterday as I walked home from the bus that delivered me from a hard days work I witnessed a young deer clicking down the street in something of a panic. The animal trotted past me on the opposite sidewalk, turned the corner and vanished into whatever fate awaited it. This is not something one sees everday in Oakland, California. Motivated by a concern for the safety of the animal and anybody who might encounter it in this very urban neighborhood, I notified the animal control people.

I can only hope that one way or another my little Bambi made it to safety.

I urge everbody who has not already done so to pop over to Frank Paynter's place and catch up with the discussion of "genderism" he has initiated and is bravely moderating.

Do you think you know what it means to be a man or a woman? Read some of the contributions at Sandhill and think again.

Not being a prominent American, I wasn't asked to sign this statement of conscience* but I am happy to add my signature in spirit and to endorse the statement with all of my heart.

With you or against you, George W.? That's easy.

Just watch me turn my back on your illiterate, war mongering, U.S. Constitution mocking self.


* Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the Statement of Conscience link!

When the great Tao is forgotten,
goodness and piety appear.
When the body's intelligence declines,
cleverness and knowledge step forth.
When there is no peace in the family,
filial piety begins.
When the country falls into chaos,
patriotism is born.

-Tao Te Ching, verse 18, from a translation by Stephen Mitchell-

I am one of the lonely tonight. . .

Sarah is far from home on business again.

The tanka below is for her. Sorry to say it is not a new one. I don't even have the moon tonight.


The hesitant moon
hides behind clouds, lights dimly
their ragged edges.
Empty pillows on the bed,
another night without you.

Richard Cody, 2002

I have been writing one thing or another for a good portion of my 35 years on this planet. To the right of me as I type these words is a large wicker basket (I have learned from watching Trading Spaces that baskets and trunks are practical and aesthetically pleasing storage spaces) which contains a stack of notebooks and binders filled to bursting with the detritus of a lifetime spent indulging artistic impulse and the urge to self-expression.

That stack is nearly two feet tall and includes material dating back twenty years or more in some cases. Sifting through this paper trail is a curious (sense 3) experience for me. It is interesting to see how my writing style has evolved over the years. Some of this stuff is so bad that it is painful in a self-conscious kind of way to read. There are treasures as well, though, if I may say so myself - strange glimmering shards of inspiration, softly luminous jewels of imagination buried in the black soil of mad teenage scrawlings.

It is the latter, I hope, that I propose to share with you here. It seems at one point in the early to mid 1980's that I experienced a definite phase in style and format. The vignette (3a) was my specialty. A few short paragraphs conjuring a scene on the page. Not unlike, come to think of it, what I have been doing recently here and here.

It is in a spirit of openness that I present for you the least embarrasing of this material from bygone days in the first of a potential series of posts I will call The Paper Trail. I post this material as is - no cosmetic tweaking of grammar or punctuation, no tidying of sloppy ideas or execution. The raw output of my young mind for your elucidation and entertainment.

Please keep in mind that I was doing time in my teenage years - between 14 and 17 I would guess - when the words below were written.

The Paper Trail

I sit here, and my thoughts as they so often do slip back to those warm summer nights. Not so long ago, yet seeming like an eternity away.

The two of us sitting out on my front lawn, drinking lemonade in the lazy summer heat, talking and waving happily to the passerby. Talking. . . yes we talked, long into the night. It's the one night that strikes me now in particular, his rough but somehow soft voice sounding out to me in the twilight of sunset.

"Hey," he said softly, as if he didn't care if I heard him or not.

"Yeah?" I answered as I observed the growing amount of red in the sky.

"Have you ever laid awake at night" he continued "safe in your bed and heard the sound of an army of rabid tootsie rolls parading through the streets of postwar Australia while viscious kindergarten children disembowled their parents?"

I glanced over at him and thought that maybe once, as a child, I had heard such a sound. "No." I answered.

He looked at me with those burning red eyes full of some emotion that I couldn't name. "Well I have." he said coldly.


Don't even think of plagiarizing this laurel in the crown of literature, I hereby copyright it in this year of The Goddess, 2002.

So much for discipline. . .

I managed a poem a week for four weeks. All poems that I am pleased with, I might add. See here and here for two examples posted previously.

Four weeks but I missed my self imposed deadline last Friday. The well was dry. . .

Sarah opined that it was a bad idea to begin with, this time-clock creativity. She agrees that discipline is a practice worthy of pursuit but maintains that art will not be rushed. She is right, of course. Those beautiful ladies we call The Muses will not be bent to my schedule.

Calliope, Erato, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, Thalia. . . I ask you creatures of grace to share my company.


I await your presence.

Has a book ever changed your life?

This is a difficult question for me to answer. Certainly, various pieces and types of literature have electrified my imagination, stirred my spirit, and challenged my intellect (such as it is) over the years. But has any of them worked a definite change in the way I view the world or live my life? I can't recall any shocking and immediate changes occurring in my thinking as the result of the written word. I am sure, however, that the seeds of ideas harvested from disparate texts throughout my life have cross pollinated and taken root in the rich, dark soil at the bottom of my mind. What fruit or blossom they might bear after passing through the alembic of that mind I call mine remains, perhaps, to be seen.

A book that is bearing plentiful fruit for me at the moment is Riane Eisler's, The Chalice and the Blade. To attempt to sum this book up briefly would be to undermine the relevance of its topic but, in short, it concerns itself with the oppression, suppression and repression of women and femine ideals such as compassion, equality and sharing.

As I make my way through this book, I find issues such as male agression, war, feminism and the relationship of the sexes in general taking on new dimensions. Ms. Eisler, drawing on archeological evidence and utilizing the science of systems analysis, paints a very convincing picture of a world that might have been and yet may be if we can break free of what she refers to as "Dominator" ideals such as ranking, possession and agression which have shaped the cultures of the world for the last few millenia or so. As I make my way through this book I become increasingly convinced that perhaps the crucial problem facing us (the world community) today and one which underlies our shared history of war, genocide, and violence in general is one of gender. Specifically the female gender and it's place, or lack thereof, at the table in the conduct of social, cultural, human affairs.

As Elizabeth Cady Stanton said in 1848:

"Among the many important questions which have been brought before the public, there is none that more vitally affects the human family than that which is technically callled 'Women's Rights'."

There are certainly more women in positions of power and influence today than there were in Stanton's time but this statement rings just as true today as it did 150 years ago.

As this man's world spins faster and faster (where she stops nobody knows) into a future of environmental degradation and yet more war, let us hope it is a statement that is ringing loud enough to be heard.