Thanksgiving

Over here, we say our thanks
Over there, we send our tanks
Over here, it's Thanksgiving
Over there, it's time for grieving

Over here, we say our grace
While our drones invade their space
We bow our heads to pray for peace
And the safe return of our troops
Over there, some children might leave
For school and may never return

Over here, we hug and give flowers
While they get missile showers
We toast, we laugh and dig into dinner
Overindulging, the more the better
Over there, they can't bake the bread
No wood, no fire, children won't be fed

Over here, we say our thanks
Over there, we send our tanks
Over here, it's Thanksgiving
Over there, it's time for grieving

Over here it's the best time we've had
We kiss and hug, we say goodbye
Over there they bury the dead,
Pray and hope to survive another night

Have any minds and hearts been won
Since we started launching our drones?
And have the last ten years of mayhem
Made us any safer in the year 2011?

Over here, we say our thanks
Over there, we send our tanks
Over here, it's Thanksgiving
Over there, it's time for grieving

Thanksgiving 2011

"Whatever Gets You through the Night..."

My friend's typical work day

90 emails to respond to

7-8 meetings to move through

3 fires to put out

5 staff people in crisis to support

7:30 am to 7 pm it's go, go, go

At 2 a.m. still awake

Her mind the Indy 500

But she knows what she needs

She reaches for her I-Pod

And listens to another Chomsky lecture

As he takes down U.S. power and ideology

She says it soothes her

"... it's all right, it's all right"

Mary Ellen by Carol

I’m trying to remember
I’m trying to remember
When it all began
I suppose it began with my birth
But then again it also began with Mary Ellen

I loved Mary Ellen.
We were in college together
And she was a dorm mother or something of that nature
And I’m not too sure how I met her
But we were seniors and I babysat to make spending money
(babysat two very strange children
Who could have been the stars
Of Henry James’ Turn of the Screw)
And then we would go to see Bergman movies
And she could do no wrong
And she said Jesus was a pacifist
And I believed it and my family screamed
‘What about Hitler?’
That’s always the question
‘What about Hitler?

And that summer I volunteered at a NM mission
And in the fall I went to Grailville
And walked up to the edge of going
Back to school as I have walked up to the
Edge of so many things
But then I turned around
And went back to St Louis
And got pregnant and went to MS to teach

And found myself in NYC –
Did I make decisions?
I was flying by the seat of my pants.
I married a man I felt I loved
And went back to MS a mother –
In the heat, the mosquitoes,the dust
The young boys with too much time on their hands
Exposing themselves, talking to my babies
About ‘fuck pants’ and I never saw their parents
And we went to Boston and Mary Ellen
Went to med school and I saw her once or twice
But she was far away

I was far away – in Boston. Then in Missouri
Here and there over the years
She lives in Santa Fe, a psychiatrist,
She does not answer letters
Our mutual friend says she lives in the present
And we are too much a part of the past

Life goes on
Children grow up
Everything changes, nothing changes
I am happy, I am sad - how glorious it would be to me
To see Mary Ellen

Impossible Debt?

1.

Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.

--Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence” (1967)

2.

Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering.  Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world.  Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contact, visits, images and sounds.  By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.

--Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing (1987)

3.

Toxic chemicals and defoliants were dropped, and lot of napalm. Many people today still have scars from napalm bombs. There were different kinds of fragmentation bombs, some the size of a fist. Even now people get killed from small, unexploded bombs. Wounded people were looked after by their families, or by the community if they had no children or relatives. The dead were buried everywhere, without coffins. Three people died in my family.

The Americans cannot repay this debt, because it’s too big.

--Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thiet, quoted in Martha Hess, Then the Americans Came: Voices from Vietnam

(1993)

4.

Unusual among Americans, Fred Wilcox has been willing to steadily look the suffering of the Vietnam War in the face.  His 1983 book is entitled Waiting for an Army to Die and it helped to raise awareness about the afflictions of U.S. veterans battling with Agent Orange.

Wilcox’s second book on Agent Orange was published last fall, this time focused on the Vietnamese people who have been damaged by the U.S. war:  Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam.

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the official U.S use of such herbicides as Agent Orange in Operation Hades, later renamed Operation Ranch Hand. After many years of research and study, Wilcox and his son, a photographer, traveled in Vietnam in 2009 to come into direct contact with the  human suffering of successive generations of Vietnamese who have been exposed to Agent Orange.

One of the most valuable aspects of the book is the voices of the Vietnamese themselves.  One urged Wilcox, “Go out to the countryside. Meet Agent Orange victims. Listen to what these people say. That is the best way to learn about the effects of Agent Orange.”[ 77]

One former soldier whose wife had monstrous offspring said, “In my family, there is always a fight with my children screaming all the night. After nearly 30 years since peace has been restored in the country, we have not experienced a single day of peace.” [46]

Doctor Nguyen Trong Nhan asserted, “Vietnam and its people continue to suffer from severe war wounds left behind by the largest chemical warfare in mankind’s history…. Thousands of people have already died in agony with deep indignation towards the perpetrators of crimes. Many women have suffered reproductive complications and even the total loss of the right to be a mother.” [43, 47]

In her work during the war, Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong noticed an increase in babies born with defects: “[In 1969]  I delivered for the first time in my life a severely deformed baby. It had no head or arms. The mother didn’t see her child, and I tried to hide my tears and my fear from her. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what the baby looked like, so I said it was very weak. It died, and I just told her that it had been too weak to live.” [156]  

She told Wilcox that she has extended invitations to the manufacturers of Agent Orange to come to Vietnam and see the human consequences of their product.  But they refuse to acknowledge the suffering and their role in causing it.  Dr.  Nguyen thinks that people of conscience the world over should boycott the products of companies like Monsanto, until these companies render compensation to their victims.

5.

Back in 1973 as U.S. troops were leaving Vietnam, activist and poet Denise Levertov offered the following challenge to her fellow American citizens: “I would like to see this withdrawal followed by the penitent presentation to the people of Vietnam by the U.S. of huge quantities of food and supplies—such quantities that people here would feel the pinch, actually sacrifice something, not merely donate a surplus. I would like to see this given absolutely outright, and unaccompanied by U.S. ‘advisers,’ though  large numbers of doctors, nurses and other people who might really be of use in reconstructing the ravaged country might humbly offer their  services to work under Vietnamese supervision. Such acts of penitence distinct from the guilt that stews in its own juice would do something to make the future more livable for our children.”

Decades later, Wilcox’s accessible, compassionate, and indignant book is a call to Americans to contribute to a future more livable for Vietnamese children and families. Refusing to close his eyes to the suffering caused by U.S. militarism, he asks, “Do American Agent Orange children deserve more help, more love and kindness, than those who lie twisted, blind, and deaf upon pallets and floors and bamboo beds throughout Vietnam?” [138]

another Bukowski poem

The History Of One Tough Motherfucker by Charles Bukowski

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,"not much
chance...give him these pills...his backbone
is crushed, but is was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he'll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there...also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off..."
I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, he
wouldn't touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn't go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.
"you can make it," I said to him.
he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.
you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left...
and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"
but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"
"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"
I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows...
it's then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.
he too knows it's bullshit but that somehow it all helps.

Start with a Postcard

Seriously, send me some of yr random ricochet words

Old school style via USPS

Your wild mind that existed eons before TFA

Your dream mind that will be glowing long after the NSA  

 

Breathing for New York by Marty King

Looking up, you can see the parameters.  Concrete, glass, and brick towers form a neat border, high above the tallest canopy of trees.   Yet within these locked in acres, about 840 of them, the trees breath for all the teeming numbers of New Yorkers who inhabit this island.  One step inside, and they begin to slow their pace.  The head down, deliberate stride morphs into a stroll.  The luxuriant greenery muffles all the abrasive sounds on the streets surrounding the park.  Paths that wander replace the grid, and I watch people's faces take on a softer look.  Some smile back, or even nod a hello.  It is in the midst of a March madness, with temperatures approaching eighty degrees.  Already, magnolias are splashing their big, bold pink and white petals.  Crabapple and plum blossoms are bursting open, revealing delicate shades of pink and purple.  And witch hazel offer its spidery, yellow wisps.  The walkways are filled with families and strollers.  Solitary folks walk their dogs, stopping to let them enjoy being outside as well.

I am drawn, as John Muir muses, “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” 

All through the green spaces are black rock formations, finely cracked old age wrinkles of geological proportions, more beautiful than the statues dotting the park. These massive sculptures remind me of how nature always trumps man. but within those skyscraper walls surrounding Central Park, each person seems to breathe in its precious gift, exhale a small bit of joy. Perhaps they take one big gulp of gentler air, before they leave, holding it in their heart as long as they can.

So You Want To Be a Writer by Charles Bukowski

When Carol was telling me last week about her experience of writing, I thought of this poem by Charles Bukowski from his book, Sifting through the Madness: For the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems...

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

In Love in Poetry

I'm in love with poetry
And it loves me back
Completely

It brings me to tears
Tears me apart
Then lifts my spirits
So magically

To distant shores
To foreign lands
Through storms and all
It carries me

All the wide emotions
It arouses in me
And without fail
It so touches me

It stirs new feelings
And awakens others
Long forgotten
A distant memory

It makes my lips smile,
Tremble or pout
Then kisses them
Tenderly

It whispers words
That make me blush
And send my heart
Into a frenzy

It fills me with warmth
And soothes me
It reads me, hears me
Feels me, hugs me

Its words move me,
Thrill me, please me
Tease me, play me
Free and release me

Words that love
And cradle me
Until I fall asleep...
Peacefully

Tina and I did a writing exercise.  We opened a book (The Other Side of Brightness by Colum McCann), blindly pointed at a sentence, copied it down and then wrote on from there.  This is my sentence and writing:

"Don't do that," she said, pushing his hand away."
You're too hard, too cunning and difficult - keep your hands to yourself.  If you touch me I want more but you only issue the invitation to be withdrawn so I don't want you to touch me.
In the evening I sit at my table breaking up tiny bits of glass into tinier bits and I wonder about you.  You come and go like a bitter winter wind, no spring in your breeze, a flight of crows, no bluebirds, in the darkening sky.  Why is this?  Who has broken your heart and left you alone and shattered to abandon and shatter others?
It is not apparent at first.  You are full of summer winds and starry nights but soon the brokenness surfaces and the fearfulness of that overgrown heart, shaped and reshaped by doctors, lovers, family and friends, begins to appear - defending itself from every nuance of care or love - denying itself the healing it needs and so I just have to say, "Don't touch me, don't do that," and push your hand away.

Bhakti Song

Guruji

I look forward to you going to the Middle East:

Because

Wherever I look, there you are

No matter where you are, there you are

If I look at the leaves swirling, there you are

If I look at the curious eighteen-year-old student, there you are

If I look at the crinkled, inked-up manuscript, there you are

If I look at the sun partially hidden by the clouds, there you are

If I look at my right hand, there you are

Go in peace to the Middle East

(How else could you go?)

I’ll be here

With you

Happiness

Sitting here with you
No agenda

Breathing in and out
No to-do list

Being calm and at ease
No strategic plan

Looking into your eyes
No rubrics

scrubbing a broken heart

Monday. It feels like a bad dream but
no awakening today.
The darkness eerily familiar, left foot than
right.
This layer of skin is too transparent.
A tear escapes, concealed behind plastic and cotton.
I am tired. empty. raw.

I tear one layer from another, there is
a sweet comfort in scrubbing clean.
One, two, three, four. repeat. index, middle, ring...
you get the idea.
Imagine iodine scrubbing away the blemishes,
splash the water & let it carry away the pain.
It rolls down the forearm, drips from the elbow. cold. chilling.
no awakening today.

"The most important thing,
don't contaminate yourself". Please doc,
tell me HOW? Keep clean, no mistakes
shit, no awakening today.

just happy

When we're younger people ask us what do you want to be when you grow up? Kids don't give weight to job security or salaries or society's subtle brain-washing. They answer actress or dancer, athlete, fireman, marine biologist starts slipping in there...they're told they can be anything & god help us most believe it, at least for a short while anyway. And then life happens. Parents happen. Society squeezes our sides until drawing in a deep breath must become a conscious act.

There was a girl once, white hair & freckles. She sang to herself a lot, lost for hours in a world all her own. They asked her too. What do you want to be? "happy" was her response....there was a pause, a furrowed brow and consternation. "You don't understand the question you elfish child".

She gazed up, her green eyes focusing, becoming clearer, "You don't understand life".

This year the question has become exhumed, just as pressing. More weight and judgement waiting behind it, ready to pounce with the arguments of 'the order', of practicality, of sense goddammit. What a stand, a defiance and a freedom telling surgeons, pediatric gastroenterologists, cardiologists, deans, chief residents that I just want to be happy.

Their faces contort, the jaw opens almost imperceptibly and for a glorious moment they think...they wait for my real reply. "No, I'm being serious, I just want to be happy".

The Temptation of Meaning

You would like to forget
our climb up the Indian hill.
But it’s like me to remember that it was a
balmy Missouri day and that
I wore a peach cotton shirt,
boasting golden, freckled shoulders.
I could tell I made you nervous.

I have thought about forgetting and
I know now that my memory wants for pain.
It forages for you, in dusty bars and parking lots,
wanting you to look, just look:

This is the slope where we pulled ahead of the others,
hoped that five minutes to ourselves
on the side of a Honduran dirt road
might help us age.

And then our holiday at the coast, which
cannot be recalled with sounds, only the bravado of
our young umbrella-ed bodies
and the taunting of the waves, which understood
the need to retreat, the need to come alone next time.

Remember my hand when we ran through the frozen city.
My hip, cupped in your palm, on the dark train ride home.

We loved the ellipses between us and them,
a hushed plane where we used to meet and
speak in our own coded and referenced tongue.
There, we laced our hands together
and sorrowed and swooned.
You touched my face. Your arms called me over
to sit on the grass,
on our knees,
on the hope of a life braided together.

For years now, you will ascend into drumbeats and the
fast company of a dissolving dream.
You’ll be unable the stomach the thought of your old selves
acting on a young heart,
abiding by innocence,
sinking their hands into my tangled hair.
You’ll loathe
the fantastic twinge that still passes between us.

Lindsay Sihilling

Sink or Savor (After the Haitian Poetry Discussion)

This week I’ve had these eerie premonitions
(I really need to say my mantram a few thousand times to Sri Anandamayi Ma)
“Eerie” because of my selfishness
Premonitions that you will be going to San Francisco for the next four+ years of your life and it’s only 2057 miles from here
“Eerie” & disorienting & gotta catch my breath
(“Is there a doctor in the house?”)
Because soon there’ll be no opportunity for
Walking with you in the Central West End
Eating at bistros
Kibbitzing about reading & writing
And simply seeing your face
And something inside me sinks …

But there you were tonight
Didi to all these young, academic, pre-med youngsters
You, so serene, so wise, so cool
To come to an event that probably most 4th years would find inconceivable
But why shouldn’t you come
Since you too are a poet
(With a blog to prove it to the entire world wide web)
Since you too have traveled here and there
And had your heart split open one way or another
By people whose struggle and dignity put so many of us to shame
Since you too are a chef and a should-be nationally certified connoisseur of chocolate
And I have my darshan of you sitting across the room
Reading aloud a Creole translated poem
Listening with ekāgratā to what people are saying
And this after a long’s day’s work
After three and a half long years of effort
And something inside of me savors…

-- Mark Chmiel

Hello, I am a Poem

Hello, I am a Poem
I am not this poem
I am not these words
I am not the mind behind them
I am not even the speaker.

Hello, I am a poem
I am this moment in time
A conglomerate of thoughts,
Writing skill, unconscious mess
Lathered on a page electronic,
Manifested
Momentary
Temporary
In some ways over before begun
Or completely unnecessary
With each period,
or the last period.
Hello I am a poem
Not the lips that utter me
The fingers that wrote me
Nor the brain that notioned me into being
I’m gone.
Goodbye.


-justin

Sobrino & me

College church. It was a weekday and I dragged my feet, nervous for the audience not the speech. He viewed himself as a prophet, to decry the injustice of the system...somewhere along the way a faculty member asked for solutions...not in the job description. Too easy or enlightened? That's what Americans want after all, feign the motions of understanding and get your hands dirty with tangible actions. Let's fix it and if the solution means cutting a check here's twenty to take away my guilt. I don't remember the words but the undertones weren't forgiving. He wasn't about placating us or hiding the truth -the more uncomfortable & challenging the better-at least I recall the fire then. I remember walking up to Dr. Chmiel at the end of the talk to say hello, confided that I was terrified to go introduce myself. I didn't...

The Next Time I Go to Latin America It Will Be To...

Practice. Practice the art of being a place that makes my spirit feel at ease. Practice patience within myself, with slowing down the pace. Practice getting grounded, smelling the smells-the exhaust and the floras. To drink in the greeness, the rolling landscape & stars. More stars than seem possible, sitting on that hill in El Sitio & gazing upward. In good company & full of love, my life sprawling out before so much possibility...& now I choose to loosen my grip on the past. Practice.

Next time I will be an MD. Dr. Amy my family will squint their eyes, act strange for approximately 15 minutes until they place my face...a flicker or remembrance or so I can hope...I would put money on Bilma. God I wonder if she ever went to nursing school, if Chepe still wears that bandana & a charming smile. I will practice my skill, clinica Ana Manganaro & see patients. Maybe feel a place there again. I will practice walking humbly. Practice breathing every moment of awareness, slow down now you crazy loon.

Next time I will practice riding the bus with even greater authenticity-being so alone & unknown yet so content. It wasn't just the novelty...

For Amal & Amal

The enemy is all about erasure
Tactics: derision and denial
Insults and salt in the wounds
When you’re a student of history
It’s no surprise—
That’s what the powerful do
So tell them over and over and over
The stories you have lived
Heard, witnessed, nightmared
Catch your breath
Shore up your sanity
And tell them again
They are a compass for the young
A splash of cold water in the face of amnesiacs
A pinprick to the comfortably settled
Hope is telling one story after another


On Sunday afternoons
You come to our meetings
Your exuberance fills the room
Of sometimes weary adults
Who need to laugh or smile
(It may have been a few days since that last laugh
We justify ourselves saying, “Look at the news”)
But you’re the good news
A reincarnation of that great anarchist revolutionary
By the flash of your eyes you declare:
“If we can’t have fun doing a flash mob
I don’t want to be part of your BDS movement”
From your elders you’ve absorbed some of your history
Keep that alive with your joie de vivre
Hope is offering one smile after another

-- Amal Tamari assisted Amal Salem at her presentation this past Sunday at the U City Library on "The State of  Mental Health in Occupied Palestine."

--Mark Chmiel

I have put on some clean clothes

Some dirty ones – no one will know the difference

We had a dusting of snow

I move quietly

The days go slowly by

The months  whistle by like bird flight

The years . . .up in smoke over the plains

Before we have even opened our eyes

winter2012

Death by Pea

It would be amusing if it were not so tragic – death by pea.  One of those sweet little green circles of life, swimming in the gravy next to the mashed potatoes was to be his nemesis, his abrupt undoing.  It was lovingly prepared by his wife of 40 years.  He, elderly, his sweetheart, a child bride,  still middle aged.  The marriage railed against by her family, but enduring, no children, just the blessed companionship of one another.

Now retired, puttering about the 4 family flat while she rose, dressed and woodenly departed for work – stiff hair, heavy makeup, tailored clothes – all belying the anguish of emotions, her deep love for her husband, her bewilderment of flying thoughts and misplacement in the world.

She told me “it was a pea.”  His already compromised breathing reduced to gasps and violent coughing – the doctors unable to discern a cause beyond the emphysema did one final X ray and spotted it  lodged in the folds of his nicotine and tar blanketed lungs – a pea.

They’d had peas for dinner she explained, some beef, potatoes and gravy and, for something green, peas.  One went on a wild journey slipping past the barriers meant to guide it and nested, comfortably, not to be digested in the soft tissue of his already compromised breath.

It was a pea out of time and place, an aberration which the folds of alveoli struggled to expel but to no avail.

The doctors said  we can do it – we’ll remove it. They did, but the lungs, chastened by years of cigarettes, blanketed by smokey inhalations, succumbed  ( to the dismay and utter sorrow of the child bride)  succumbed to death by pea.

Whispers

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.

She slips, undaunted, through the veiled door of Truth, surveying the labyrinth of her life.

My sister is the one who had written the book.  Borne of the same womb, we were blessed with a glorious time together.  But I was bewildered, seeing myself in the memoir, portrayed as if I had no mind, as if my world view was askew, defined as mentally unsound. The judgment was harsh, distorting my latent hopes and dreams.

When my father was taken I wailed, clinging to his weathered overalls.  What did my sister whisper about him? My mother was close-mouthed.  The Truth would not be revealed and as time rocked me to sleep,  the past was torn and twisted into a song I no longer could sing.

No one told the Truth.  The Truth fluttered like a tiny bird lost over the sweep of the plains. Truth disappeared into a starry night’s quilt of grief and misunderstanding and as time collapsed, all of her meaning flew.

As a child, I had a doll, a connection with my happy home. I changed her clothes lovingly, thoughtfully dressing her in new- born baby clothes, sewing tiny buttons on her dresses and fastening even tinier eyelets on her shoes.  

When the news exploded in our sun-baked town, golden wheat surrounded, my mother fled and I cradled the doll wistfully, quietly dressing and undressing her, lost in the Truth/unTruth of our lives, singing soft lullabies in the train car (was my father on the train?)while I watched the plains spin into rolling hills, as trees burst forth blanketing  the sweet, grassy earth.  

Soon the ground was smothered by mountainous cities, caverns of confusion.  My doll and I sat quietly, watching, watching, telling one another tales of momentous happenings in the stifling noisy crowds. My mother fed me, fed me stories and nourishment, stories upon stories. “ THIS is the story,” she’d whisper. “ THIS is what we say – forever and forever,” eyes brimming with tears,” THIS is what we say.”

Where, I wondered, are my sisters?  Where is my dear daddy,  the bestest railroad engineer in the whole world?  Where are my bunnies?  Where is my dolly’s bed?  Can we walk down the dusty road to town again?  Can we walk and get some candy?  Why did the policeman take my daddy and if the policeman took him, why does mama say he ran away? “ THIS will be the Truth from now on,” she says, “THIS is what we say”.

 My sister spins softly away.  I want to go back to my sweet home.  But she won’t go home.  She won’t go.

The years drifted by and though we found a home, we lost ourselves. Now, winging aloft, no longer earth bound, I have come to understand what the Truth might be.  It’s not the whole Truth.  You’d have to be able to splice words and history, beliefs and deeply held myths together  to arrive  at anything resembling a Truth for what had dissolved  our family. I hope the children keep my pictures , my doll, my striving to know. They have heard my words of doubt, aware that I did and did not believe.

Still I wish to see my sister again, to embrace her without fear, to hug my mama with complete abandon, to find my daddy.

 My soul sings with liberation from the tunnels of lies and worldly distortions, embracing  a bright and greening hope.

                                                                                                                                                                                               

Your Voice on My Cell Phone

I wish I could wave  a Potter wand
Appear in DC once a week
For three hours

Offer you distraction
Stand-up comedy
Deli sandwich and chips

Bask in your exultation
Sit with your stammering
Tell you this

"You're the miracle that's needed here!"

-- Mark Chmiel

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog!

I have designed a preliminary blog, with a background of books and a red template. If this looks unappealing, there are several options for changing it, so please comment and let me know!

I will be giving a brief overview on how to post, comment, add pictures and links, and how to share the blog sometime during class, hopefully this week if there is time. The blog is a place to share the writing that we do in and out of class, as well as post interesting articles, pictures, poems, etc. that we would like to share with everyone. We may have themed weeks (it's up to Dr. Chmiel) where we could post just interesting pictures, or perhaps share a personal story on a topic.

The blog is really all about how you use it - there are no formal rules, it's yours to create and shape! I'm really looking forward to having this!

Regards,

Priya