When we create this space within ourselves—a space of calmness that is undisturbed by the storm—the storm tends to pass more quickly.

Inward

By Yung Pueblo

A few reminders from Yung Pueblo.

Changes in the external world can cause great misery when we do not know how to engage and heal ourselves. Moments of pain and discomfort, or encounters with ideas that may break the mental images we have created of the world, are normally things we not only run away from but also things we build walls to defend ourselves from. These walls we build in our minds and hearts make sense when we don't know any better. We all have the right to protect ourselves from pain, but be aware that these walls can turn from protection into prison—the more walls we build around ourselves, the less space we have to grow and be free. We have a harder time releasing the habits that cause misery when we are surrounded by the psychological walls we have constructed, causing us to stagnate and fall into a rhythm where we are always running within a space that is slowly growing smaller.

(p. 15)

There is an important difference between dwelling in misery and understanding that on the path of healing things will come up that sometimes cause us to feel the old emotions and patterns that we are working on letting go. There is great power in honoring the reality of our current emotions—not feeding them or making them worse but simply recognizing that this is what has arisen in this present moment and that this will also change. When we create this space within ourselves—a space of calmness that is undisturbed by the storm—the storm tends to pass more quickly.

Practicing such profound honesty within ourselves helps in all facets of internal and external life—there is no real freedom without honesty, and without honesty, there can be no peace of mind. Healing ourselves isn't about constantly feeling bliss; being attached to bliss is a bondage of its own. Trying to force ourselves to be happy is counterproductive, because it suppresses the sometimes tough reality of the moment, pushing it back within our depths of our being, instead of allowing it to arise and release.

(p. 81)

How much—how little—is within our power.

 

December 2022

Envelope Poems 

By Emily Dickinson

Picked this one up on a whim during a gift shop visit, a gift for me. I'm gravitating towards poems in the winter and letting the words blanket me with comfort. Emily's envelope poems also remind me of my post-it note poems,  and more recently, my aqua-note poems & scribblings, capturing all the musings that fall with the shower downpour.

In this short life 

that only lasts an hour

merely

How much — how little —

is within our power.

But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

 

Flare
By Mary Oliver

Today's a hard day for me but instead of succumb to too much sorrow, I intend to spend the day outdoors. I know Mary Oliver would approve and—speaking of—there's a poem I encountered earlier this year, while making my way through Devotions, that stunned me. A new one I'd never read before that I immediately felt in my bones.

Full read in its whole perfect splendor, here. 

And it starts with, "Welcome to the silly, comforting poem."

"5.
My mother was the blue wisteria,

my mother

was the mossy stream out being the house,

my mother, alas, alas,

did not always love her life,

heavier than iron it was

as she carried it in her arms, from room to room,

oh, unforgettable!

I bury her 

in a box

in the earth

and turn away.

My father

was a demon of frustrated dreams,

was a breaker of trust, 

was a poor, thin boy with bad luck.

He followed God, there being no one else 

he could talk to;

he swaggered before God, there being no one else

who would listen.

Listen,

this was his life.

I bury it in the earth.

I sweep the closets.

I leave the house.

6.

I mention them now, 

I will not mention them again.

It is not lack of love

nor lack of sorrow.

But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

I give them—one, two, three, four—the kiss of courtesy,

of sweet thanks,

of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.

May they sleep well. May they soften.

But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.

I will not give them the responsibility for my life.

7.

Did you know that the ant has a tongue

with which to gather in all that it can

of sweetness?

Did you know that?

8.

The poem is not the world.

It isn't even the first page of the world.

But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.

It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,

like the door of a little temple,

so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,

and less yourself than part of everything."

And towards the end,

"A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of the world
and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.

Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.

And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling."

I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair.

 

I Am Running Into A New Year

By Lucille Clifton

Oh, this is such a good one.

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This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

Good Bones

By Maggie Smith

This poem struck me at first read and has entered my conscience often since. 

I had a weekend that reminded me of the good; I was so glad to laugh, cry, and woo for my friends over three days of nuptial celebrations. To dance freely. To be near the ocean, day and night. To meet lovely, open, good-hearted people who inspired tons of my curiosity (though I was too shy to intensely grill them all about their lives). We could make this place beautiful.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

may you kiss the wind then turn from it / certain that it will / love your back

blessing the boats

By Lucille Clifton

Some favorite classical music played in the background the other day and at some point turned to "The Carnival of the Animals" by Camille Saint-Saëns. Did I always know that Bill Murray recited Lucille Clifton's "blessing the boats" over this rendition? I don't know that I did...and yet I'm sure I added it for a reason. Perhaps solely for the melody? Either way, it hit as if I were listening to it for the first time and now I can't stop.

may the tide 

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out 

beyond the face of fear 

may you kiss the wind then turn from it

certain that it will 

love your back     may you 

open your eyes to water 

water waving forever 

and may you in your innocence 

sail through this to that

A butterfly emerges from its chrysalis~

No words, but this is poetry. 

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Well, there is time left—fields everywhere invite you into them.

Devotions

By Mary Oliver

One of my favorite things to do - lately - after a long day of excessive screen time at my desk, is retreat to my rocking chair, grab Devotions, and turn to a random page for a dose of poem.

This one made me a little teary. I had an inspiring conversation with a mentor on Thursday morning. That discussion and these tender words in the evening were perfect, complementary bookends to the day.

Have You Ever Tried To Enter The Long Black Branches

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches 

of other lives—

tried to imagine what the crisp fingers, full of honey, hanging

from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer,

feel like?

Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides

with perfect courtesy, to let you in!

Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!

Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint

that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot 

    in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself

    continually?

Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed

    with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left—

fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away

    from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is

    the mystery, which is the death as well as life, and

    not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome

    with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine

    god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the

    present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the triplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult

than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said

    to the wild roses:

deny me not,

but suffer my devotion.

Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red, 

hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters, 

caution and prudence?

Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.

A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next

    is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,

    upon the immutable.

What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,

and I would bow down

to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,

I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.

I float.

I ramble my way home.

They blink on and off, a lime glow to the summer night air, as if to say: I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here, I am, you are, over and over again.

World of Wonders

By Aimee Nezhukumatatkil

This is a book with gorgeous intent, and it regenerated my yearning for the natural world, a place I love so much but engage with so little. It laid new magic words in my lap (senescence, crepuscular!) and was a reminder and a motivation to be in the world more often, to know our fellow species more intimately, and receive their nourishing and sustaining lessons.

Completely inspired by Nezhukumatatkil's technique, I found myself thinking about the tiny personal stories I could tell—I think of the firefly (photinus pyralid), honeysuckle (lonicera), earthworm (lumbricina), to name a few—and falling into a bit of nostalgia recalling a trove of childhood memories I had forgotten...

Fireflies remind me of spending summer evenings with my family in the Bronx and holding my mom's hand on our late-night bus rides back to Queens. The first time I tasted honeysuckle, I remember the feeling of sweet surprise that something floral could give back to me in that way. Once my neighbor friend and I dug our hands into soil and encountered earthworms and felt gentle, awed and unafraid. And on.

I miss fireflies and what they remind me of: timeless youth, which I now know is at complete opposition to what their light means for their lives. It hadn't occurred to me that most children today will have a different experience of them, or none at all.

"For a beetle, fireflies live long and full lives—around two years—though most of it is spent underground, gloriously eating and sleeping to their hearts' content. When we see these beacons flashing their lights, they usually only have one or two weeks left to live. Learning this as a child—I could often be found walking slowly around untrimmed lawns, stalling and not quite ready to go inside for dinner—made me melancholy, even in the face of their brilliance. I couldn't believe something so full of light would be gone so soon.

I know I will search for fireflies all the rest of my days, even though they dwindle a little bit more each year. I can't help it. They blink on and off, a lime glow to the summer night air, as if to say: I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here, I am, you are, over and over again. Perhaps I can will it to be true. Perhaps I can keep those summer nights with my family inside an empty jam jar, with holes poked in the lid, a twig and a few strands of grass tucked inside. And for those unimaginable nights in the future, when I know I'll miss my mother the most, I will let that jar's sweet glow serve as a night-light to cool and cut the air for me."

("Firefly," photons pyralis, p. 12)

"Why all the fuss and euphoria over some greenery? Well, I still coo over its delightful pinnation, the double-leaf pattern feathering outward then inward from both sides of a single stem, and its spherical lavender-pink flowers, which bloom only in summer, and look as if someone crossed a My Little Pony doll with a tiny firework. But its best and most notable feature is that when you piano your fingers over the leaves of this plant, they give a shudder and a shake and quickly fold shut, like someone doesn't want to spill a secret."

("Touch-Me-Nots, mimosa pudica, p. 25)

"Bonnet macaques reminded me how good it felt to laugh, to keep laughing in love. To make my love laugh. To let my laughter be from a place of love."

("Bonnet Macaque," Macaca radiata, p. 74)

"I'm certain it's not any magic in my mouth, no special twist of tongue that only I have unlocked. But I think it's the quiet way you settle into the crook of a tree trunk, the still and slowdown of your heart in a world that wants to be quick and to move onto the next thing. The secret in talking to birds is in the steadiness of each limb as you make your way into their territory, in the deliberateness of each movement and bend of tree branch and grass blade. And just like the potoo, who is rewarded for her stillness by having her lunch practically fly right to her mouth—perhaps you could try a little tranquility, find a little tenderness in your quiet. Who knows what feathered gifts await?"

("Potoo," Nyctibius griseus, p. 97)

Reading about an animal's slow death delivers a specific kind of heartbreak, and I always notice it. I don't *like* it at all, but I'm drawn to it, maybe because the description taps into the most empathetic, deep feeling sides of me. (See Cheryl Strayed on a bird's death, Chris Jones on a massacre at a zoo, W.C. Heinz on the death of a racehorse.) Here is Nezhukumatatkil on her experience with a dying octopus, which is 100x sadder after she explains how smart and sensitive they are.

"Instead I focused on its golden eye, how it fixed upon my shape. How its arms wrapped and drooped around my wrist and up my forearm while it took me in, tasted me. In those moments I held it, how many things it might have felt or known about me. Could it sense the love and exhilaration I felt for it or my sheer despair once I realized it was dying in my hands? I only know that I had never been looked at, consumed, or questioned so carefully by another being."

("Octopus," Octopus vulgaris, p. 107)

"On those weeks in Mississippi when the air outside is like a napping dragon's exhalations, there's no sweeter cocktail to lull us out of a sleepy, slow summer evening. If you do catch a sunburn, you can mash up a bit of the dragon fruit flesh and apply it to the tender pink of your skin to help soothe it like an aloe. The dragon can be both the wildness we call out when we see this pink egg, and it can also be the balm. This is the fruit for a time of year when the sun and all its gallop don't merely feel as though they have nudged us from a static winter, but into a fully alive, roaring season—when everything you touch feels like it could give you a blister and a bit of wild burn."

("Dragon Fruit," Hylocereus undatus, p. 115)

Allow for the possibility that the best of you is still inside you, waiting to emerge.

© Random House

By Lin-Manuel Miranda
Illustrated by Jonny Sun

Wrapping this book for a friend. I'd gift it ten more times. My copy lives on my nightstand—its words having been savored, treasured by me over mornings and nights for months. Just pure, precious, and uplifting poetry. Thankful this exists and excited to pay it forward!

I just remembered I found myself standing next to Lin-Manuel in an elevator in July. I became so shy, I couldn't even look at him, let alone speak.*** It wouldn't have been out of line to say hello, as we were both in the building for the same reason...and he was standing with my colleague. There was no easy, non-clichéd, quick, and bold way to tell him his words have had such great impact: providing hope, power, support, and antidote to loneliness.

This is coming from someone who hasn't had the opportunity yet to see Hamilton or In The Heights. (deep sigh x2.) Just someone who has benefited from his Twitter pep talks. (Truly.)

All of them are great. Here's one. This is the page that's currently bookmarked in my copy. (p. 168)

***(Also, now recalling my Patti Smith story as well—what the hell. I need to get better at meeting my idols.)

We learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge, and therefore, lasting action comes.

©Image Club/Getty Images

Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches
By Audre Lorde

Poetry Is Not a Luxury

"But as we come more into touch with our own ancient, non-European consciousness of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge, and therefore, lasting action comes."
(p. 37)

"We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundation for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before."
(p. 37)

"The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom."
(p. 38)

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver

Just because. It is a gift to feel at home with yourself. Requires hard-earned, trying, self-consuming work. Over and over. Strongly believe having read (and heard) these words along the way made a difference.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver, Dec. 2018 in Market Square Park (Houston)

The Summer Day
By Mary Oliver

Stumbled upon "The Summer Day" on the ground in downtown Houston last month, only a few feet from a moving memorial for a woman who died on 9/11. I was so surprised to see the barely legible poem, delighted even; it was so easy to miss. It delivered a hopeful message for the somber moment. A month before, during an empowering women's summit hosted by Glamour Magazine, Ann Dowd followed her speech about success and self-worth by reciting "Wild Geese" to the audience. Another moment of pleasant surprise. Reading Mary's words in recent years have provided comfort, understanding, and perspective in times of of both joy and sadness. And when overcome by nature's beauty and unable to find the words, I refer to hers. I've only read Upstream, and intended to seek more of her works, so maybe I'll do that this long weekend: treat myself to quiet time and Mary's poetry and prose.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

How wonderful that the universe is beautiful in so many places and in so many ways.

Upstream: Selected Essays
By Mary Oliver

"And we might, in our lives, have many thresholds, many houses to walk out from and view the stars, or to turn and go back to for warmth and company. But the real one—the actual house, not of beams and nails but of existence itself—is all of earth, with no door, no address separate from oceans or stars, or from pleasure or wretchedness either, or hope, or weakness, or greed.
How wonderful that the universe is beautiful in so many places and in so many ways. But also the universe is brisk and businesslike, and no doubt does not give its delicate landscapes or its thunderous displays of power, and perhaps perception, too, for our sakes or our improvement. Nevertheless, its intonations are our best tonics, if we would take them. For the universe is full of radiant suggestion. For whatever reason, the heart cannot separate the world's appearance and actions from morality and valor, and the power of every idea is intensified, if not actually created, by its expression in substance. Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever and forever returns, we experience eternity."
(p. 114)

From "Bird," one of my two favorite essays in this collection. It reminded me of Cheryl Strayed's encounter with a bird. The opposite experience and yet as equally cathartic:

"He was, of course, a piece of the sky. His eyes said so. This is not fact; this is the other part of knowing something, when there is no proof, but neither is there any way toward disbelief. Imagine lifting the lid from a jar and finding it filled not with darkness but with light. Bird was like that. Startling, elegant, alive."
(p. 132)

'2. Ropes' in "Two Short Ones" (My other favorite)

"In the old days dogs in our town roamed freely. But the old ways changed.
One morning a puppy arrived in our yard with a length of rope hanging from his collar. He played with our dogs; eventually he vanished. But the next morning he showed up again, with a different rope attached. This happened for a number of days—he appeared, he was playful and friendly, and always accompanied by a chewed-through rope.
Just at that time we were moving to another house, which we finished doing all in one evening. A day or so later, on a hunch, I drove back to the old house and found him lying in the grass by our door. I put him in the car and showed him where our new house was. "Do your best," I said.
He stayed around for a while, then was gone. But there he was the next morning at the new house. Rope dangling. Later that day his owner appeared—with his papers from the Bideawee home, and a leash. "His name is Sammy," she said. "And he's yours."
As Sammy grew older he began to roam around the town and, as a result, began to be caught by the dog officer. Eventually, of course, we were summoned to court, which, we learned quickly, was not a place in which to argue. We were told to build a fence. Which we did.
But it turned out that Sammy could not only chew through ropes, he could also climb fences. So his roaming continued.
But except for the dog officer, Sammy never got into trouble; he made friends. He wouldn't fight with other dogs, he just seemed to stay awhile in someone's yard, and if possible, to say hello to the owners. People began to call us to come and get him before the dog officer saw him. Some took him into their houses to hide him from the law. Once a woman on the other end of town called; when I got there she said, "Can you wait just a few minutes? I'm making him some scrambled eggs."
I could tell many more stories about Sammy—they're endless. But I'll just tell you the unexpected, joyful conclusion. The dog officer resigned! And the next officer was a different sort; he too remembered and missed the old days. So when he found Sammy he would simply call him into his truck and drive him home. In this way, he lived a long and happy life, with many friends.
This is Sammy's story. But I also think there are one or two poems in it somewhere. Maybe it's what life was like in this dear town years ago, and how a lot of us miss it.
Or maybe it's about the wonderful things that may happen if you break the ropes that are holding you."
(pp. 143-145)

There were rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface...There is a fear of love.

Let The Great World Spin

By Colum McCann

"Maybe, yes, it's just pure selfishness. They did not notice the mezuzah on the door, the painting of Solomon, didn't mention a single thing about the apartment, just launched right in and began. They even walked up to the rooftop without asking. Maybe that's just the way they do it, or maybe they're blinded by the paintings, the silverware, the carpets. Surely there were other well-heeled boys packed off to war. Not all of them had flat feet. Maybe she should meet other women, more of her own. But more of her own what? Death, the greatest democracy of them all. The world's oldest complaint. Happens to us all. Rich and poor. Fat and thin. Fathers and daughters. Mothers and sons. She feels a pang, a return. Dear Mother, this is just to say that I have arrived safely, the first began. And then at the end he was writing, Mama, this place is a nothing place, take all the places and give me nothing instead. Oh. Oh. Read all the letters of the world, love letters or hate letters or joy letters, and stack them up against the single one hundred and thirty-seven that my son wrote to me, place them end to end, Whitman and Wilde and Wittgenstein and whoever else, it doesn't matter -- there's no comparison. All the things he used to say! All the things he could remember! All that he put his finger upon!" 

(p. 107)

"Her Bronx accent threw the poem around until it seemed to fall at her feet." 

(p. 148)

"Outside, there were two tickets in the window of the Pontiac--a parking fine, and one for a smashed headlight. It was enough to almost knock me sideways. Before I drove him to the cabin, I went back to the window of the bar and shaded my eyes against the glass, looked in. Ciaran was at the counter, his arms folded and his chin on his wrist, talking to the bartender. He glanced up in my direction and I froze. Quickly I turned away. There were rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface.

There is, I think, a fear of love.

There is a fear of love. 

(p. 156) 

Human knowledge is power, Mama. The only limits are in our minds.

Let The Great World Spin

By Colum McCann

Hello hello hello. Not a great reading/blogging start for me this year but that's OK because the new year is exciting and I've been living. And I am ready now to tackle the many many books I want to finish in 2015.

Colum McCann is a poet. His sentences are poetry. I love this read, though it took me a while to embrace it. My friend gave it to me for Secret Santa -- a great gift. I'm about halfway through & savoring his language every moment.

"Some kids were dancing on the corners. Their bodies in flux. Like they had discovered something entirely new about themselves, shaking it through like a sort of faith."

(p. 70)

"Nothing much happening on Park. Everyone gone to their summer homes. Solomon, dead against. City boy. Likes his late hours. Even in summertime. His kiss this morning made me feel good. And his cologne smell. Same as Joshua's. Oh, the day Joshua first shaved! Oh, the day! Covered himself in foam. So very careful with the razor. Made an avenue through the cheek, but nicked himself on the neck. Tore off a tiny piece of his Daddy's Wall Street Journal. Licked it and pasted it to the wound. The business page clotting his blood. Walked around with the paper on his neck for an hour. He had to wet it to get it off. She had stood at the bathroom door, smiling. My big tall boy, shaving. Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

No newspapers big enough to paste him back together in Saigon."

(p. 81)

"Perhaps she could hire Gloria. Bring her in. Odd jobs around the house. The bits and pieces. They could sit at the kitchen table together and while away the days, make a secret gin and tonic or two, and let the hours just drift, her and Gloria, at ease, at joy, yes, Gloria, in excelsis deo." 

(p. 82)

"It was easy enough to write a program that would collate the dead, he said, but what he really wanted was to write a program that could make sense of the dying. That was the deep future. One day the computers would bring all the great minds together. Thirty, forty, a hundred years from now. If we don't blow one another asunder first. 

We're at the cusp of human knowledge here, Mama, he said. He wrote about the dream of widely separated facilities sharing special resources. Of messages that were able to go back and forth. Of remote systems that could be manipulated through the telephone lines. Of computers that were capable of repairing their own malfunctions. Of protocols and bulk erasers and teletype printouts and memory and RAM and maxing out the Honeywell and fooling around on the prototype Alto that had been sent across. He described circuit boards like some people described icicles. He said that the Eskimos had sixty-four words for snow but that didn't surprise him; he thought they should have more -- why not? It was about the deepest sort of beauty, the product of the human mind being stamped onto a piece of silicon that you might one day cart around in your briefcase. A poem in a rock. A theorem in a slice of stone. The programmers were the artisans of the future. Human knowledge is power, Mama. The only limits are in our minds. He said there was nothing that a computer couldn't do, even the most complicated problems, find the value of pi, the root of all language, the most distant star. It was crazy how small the world truly was. It was a matter of opening up to it. What you want is your machine to speak back to you, Mama. It almost has to be human. You have to think of it that way. It's like a Walt Whitman poem: you can put in it everything you want."

(p. 89)

Then he began to read in a low, stumbling voice that grew firmer as he progressed from line to line.

Fahrenheit 451

By Ray Bradbury

"The room was blazing hot, he was all fire, he was all coldness; they sat in the middle of an empty desert with three chairs and him standing, swaying, and him waiting for Mrs. Phelps to stop straightening her dress hem and Mrs. Bowles to take her fingers away from her hair. Then he began to read in a low, stumbling voice that grew firmer as he progressed from line to line, and his voice went out across the desert, into the whiteness, and around the three sitting women there in the great hot emptiness.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

In melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

The chairs creaked under the three women. Montag finished it out:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems 

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So curious, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Mrs. Phelps was crying.

The others in the middle of the desert watched her crying grow very loud as her face squeezed itself out of shape. They sat, not touching her, bewildered with her display. She sobbed uncontrollably. Montag himself was stunned and shaken."

(pp. 96-7)

If day has to become night, this is a beautiful way.

Selected Poems
By E.E. Cummings

A favorite of mine:

Days of Innocence
who are you, little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window; at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling: that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

I wouldn't like Death if Death were good. (Not even if Death were good.)

Selected Poems
By E.E. Cummings

The first time I saw Ra Ra Riot was a few months after I started at Syracuse when one of my (now best) friends asked me if I wanted to check them out at the Funk N' Waffles on Marshall Street. I was indifferent and I'd never heard of them before but the show was 5 bucks, it was October, I was new to campus and had a try-anything mentality, so I went. This was before they renovated the place, so the stage was near the front and it couldn't have been elevated more than a foot off the ground.  Basically there was no real separation between band and audience. Not many people showed up that night from what I remember, or well, it was a small space. So it was intimate. And long story short: I fell in love and they're now one of my favorites. I've seen them five times since, including once at the beginning of this year and I'll probably see them again in October when they return to NYC. (A description I wrote of Ra Ra Riot in 2010 for CITYist.com.)

I am also a fan of e.e. cummings and the other day picked up Selected Poems, a book I purchased in January 2012 that I never finished. It was such a pretty cover (see above) and I like him so I bought it. As I was reading last week I came upon the below and realized that "Dying Is Fine," one of my favorites and one of Ra Ra Riot's most popular songs, was inspired by one of the poems! Instantly looked it up to make sure (though it had to be), and it was just kind of a great, quiet little epiphany I had one morning.

Read & then listen:

instagram.com/noeliasophia

Mama borned a baby and she slept in the arms of hope.

The second and last excerpt from How to Be Black is another by Derrick Ashong. Not my intention and I literally just realized that the following words would be his too. He wrote a great poem. In the words of Baratunde: "I honestly cannot think of a better way to fully close this book than [his poem] and Derrick's explanation in this final space."

Water
Water, fresh on the lips of one
Who has known no rivers.
What kiss could be so sweet
As the lingering taste of life?

Mama borned a baby
and she slept in the arms of hope
In her eyes she grew a lady
deftly robed in a cloth sewn centuries ago
with a needle threaded in tears
and guided by notes of a song
spun softly in a soul saddled
by a spirit so strong no noose
was ever long enough to break it.
Some people couldn't take it.
How could this thing with a different skin
sing so loud as to drown the stinking sin
of a nation?
Mama's baby was born post-emancipation
but pre-liberation, and so the song that she wore
within her skin was less a tale of times past 
than a calling.
A calling.

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock
"Who's there?"
It's me. Tell the man I came for my Freedom
It called for me while you were sleeping. 
It screamed that the hypocrisy of our fathers was
reeking and it needed to get out of the house.

America the beautiful
Adrift in a reverie of her own making.
Had Freedom locked up so long 
we wouldn't recognize her if she were taken
from right beneath the flag.
This dress that she wears 
is a song we don't care to sing
We'd rather go carelessly marching into
a war we can never win, for the enemy
Lies within.

Who put the terror in terrorism?
Ask any brother shackled in prison,
whether by the forefather's vision of 3/5ths
of a man, or Supreme Court decision that hands
the American crown to the 
prodigal
profligate
prefabricate one.
The heir who cries WAR, when it won't be his son or daughter left to bleed our dreams
into the flood of the killing fields.
How long will it be before America yields
her thirst for violence to the people's need for Peace?

It is our calling
I done made my vow to the Lord.
Not the "president."

We wear the song of a slave, because in this 
home of the brave it was the hated one
who had the courage to cry Freedom.
We don't just sing Love, we live it.
For in our song strives the spirit that taught
us what it means to be FREE.

A Black tide carried us through the slaughter,
And so today we sing like

Water, so soft on the lips of one
Who has known no rivers.
What kiss could be so sweet
As the lingering sound of life?

*snap* *snap*