After reading this poem by Antonia at Reluctant Painter, I wrote this:
the throat has no subtle strangulation
when met by rhythms such as those
beating hearts that slip off
the page into my porcelain soul
i take my leave
midst the course palpitations,
check my vigil at the door
and wisp myself away
on the words you leave me with
while going about your day
unconcerned with my fate,
my formidable challenge
A Mini web page told Mini Mary about a mini-restaurant in Columbus. So we Volvo-ed over to try it. (my car’s bigger!) We had many a mini good minutes mincing a magnificent meal miming perfection. Basi Italia is too good to hide, but certainly small enough to miss.
Creative, subtle Italian/American cuisine tantalized the Muse. Smoked chicken /Gorgonzola/Port wine sauce over pasta wouldn’t take no to another bite; or hearty, zesty tomato/sausage/fennel bulb/raisin sauce with rigatoni; or mustard crusted trout with basil sauce; or large, ricotta gnocchi with basil pesto sauce. Sweetness within savory was the chef’s signature, to my delight.
Memories mimic the marvelous experience, the light city air on the the gracious, tastefully landscaped patio, the magnetic charm of this mouse house, nigh a Mini’s size in the neighborhood wall. The service was smiling and efficient.
Off the beaten path, on Highland Street, an alley really, in the Short North of Columbus, the evening magnified how good “as good as it gets” can be. What munificent serendipity!
Mini owners have maxi say in my book!
Ubuntu means shared humanity, knowing we are all connected in the world.
In some ways, we are all responsible for 9/11, for the war on Iraq, for the failed dikes and appalling response to the crisis in the South, for our country’s pitiful world image. We are still a democracy, though tattered. If our voices are not heard, we are not shouting loud enough. I know I didn’t shout loud enough during the last election. No one has found a better political system than the United States. Let’s turn up the heat and boil off the poison.
We are all looters. We loot the world, quietly rape the planet, then tell everyone to leave us alone. As a country we are deluded in thinking this can continue any longer. We smile and say we are doing our best. Would you give up your roomy house and car tomorrow if everybody in the world could be fed and housed? I know I wouldn’t. Not without a fight.
That’s the fight we’re in. A fight inside each of us. Personal responsibility for the future. There’s so much blame going on right now. Why don’t we point that critical telescope at ourselves? Ask yourself difficult questions. What is the planet worth? What sacrifice will you make toward preserving what we are now destroying faster than it can heal? What are you doing to make poverty history? What did you do toward any of these ideal ends today? Think big, act in small ways.
OK, enough of this lumbering stump of a post, I’d like to add some quotes from a rich, edgy post by Jessamyn over at at Theriomorph. These ideas stir the pot, get you thinking. Dense stuff.
Trying to summarize the complicated, serpentine issue of blame and its twisted misuse:
Some of us – those who still have the luxury – just can’t deal with the sickening horror of the idea that perhaps we do not have full control over our experience, so we defend the notion that we do by blaming others who experience, or admit, powerlessness.
And she finds this hypocracy hiding everywhere:
It’s even in our syntax.
“Mistakes were made.†What mistakes? By whom? Presto: one neato passive construction and both consequence and responsibility are neatly evaded.
“A woman got raped.†By whom? A phantom? She GOT raped? Like, got herself raped? Where is the rapist in the sentence? Nowhere. We don’t say “A man raped a woman.â€[…]
These are not linguistic coincidences. These are reflections of our values in our language that allow us to retain privilege, distance from responsibility, strip the powerless of their humanity so we don’t have to identify with them, or blame them for what happened to them so we don’t have to concede it could also happen to us.
In summary, after a firey review of other socially presumptuous language, we are presented with:
The inequities of this society are ubiquitous. That doesn’t mean we aren’t responsible for them. And magical thinking and blaming the victim, while a comfortable habit of generations and generations, has yet to effect change.
She ends with a wake up slap.
And aggression almost always begins in our words.
Worthy reading if you care to pop over there.
Technorati tags- responsibility, democracy, language and power
There’s are times when I feel an almost mystical message from certain scenes in nature.
Like right now, outside my window, a beam of late sun leans flat on the garden, a bright stripe sliced across the middle of the darkness, lifting textures into patterns, sparkly noises of light coming from the plants in it’s path. As the sun lifts the light in it’s decent into shadow, the message changes, a narrative, a mapping of this particular scene, this denouement, cascading code, only breakable as it happens.
And Agassi knows the code, Federer too. As it happens, a match unfolds, a flower of intension, genes, opportunity, nature, mood, crowd (rooting for Agassi).
Federer is so cocky, with good reason. (beautiful too) That makes Agassi the hero, also an advantage. Federer knows that too. Neither can hide. The goal is pure. (and lucrative, as a gold standard should be).
Almost pure will. Especially Agassi. Mystical.
“We can always be more, we just can’t be everything.”
Spicey Cauldron
Being ones “self” is such a slippery journey. I am often waylaid by my fears, doubts, incorrect self perceptions and presumptions, confusing feedback from a conformist society, and just plain laziness. It’s easier to just stay the path. Don’t rock your own boat, for goodness sake. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. We’re pulled in so many directions, by the expectations of our friends and family. And they each have their own blind spots, and so cannot be “objective”.
And trust is so fragile. How often have you thought you trusted someone and they disappoint you in the end. Especially when it’s family who betrays you.
I have been fairly lucky in having trustworthy family and friends. I consider myself trustworthy, but I’m sure I’ve disappointed those close to me. Perhaps some would consider that a sort of betrayal.
Last night I spent some quality time with Joe. We cuddled and talked, which is conducive to peeling away layers. I was as loquacious as ever, even more than usual. I talked and talked. He is able to follow and absorb a huge amount of information from me. How lucky I am to have such an ideal sounding board, an ultimate other. I was able to open up and voice things even I didn’t know I was thinking. Or, more clearly, I felt those things, but was barely aware of them without having articulated them.