I am back in Maryland and don't want to mow the lawn. I miss the house on Coon Hill Road, I miss the hikes on the Waterloo-Pinckney, I miss my wife (staying an extra week), I miss my daughter (staying the rest of her life), I do not miss Michigan. I don't want to go back to work. I'd like to read but can't and I can't blame my eyes, nothing works long before my eyes would tire which they do in five minutes. I can't stop thinking about the Jackson County sheriff trailing me in his pick-up for five minutes, running my plates, or the guy fishing Portage River from the bridge on Wooster Road almost every time we drove by who set the fish he caught on the bridge to flail to death tortured and frightened. Maryland is famous for fishing and all cops are bastards and I've got as much shit from locals buying a bottle of water in Garrett County Maryland as I did buying water in the Portage Lake bodega. I went down the generous blogroll of late lamented ::: wood s lot ::: this morning, easily more than half dead. I still feel compelled to compile these links. What I can't write about Michigan trumps Trump Michigan and empties Maryland. We've booked the house on Coon Hill for the third week in October
DECEMBER 2, 2002
Julianna Spahr
As it happens every night, beloveds, while we turned in the night
sleeping uneasily the world went on without us.
We live in our own time zone and there are only a small million of
us in this time zone and the world as a result has a tendency to
begin and end without us.
While we turned sleeping uneasily at least ten were injured in a
bomb blast in Bombay and four killed in Palestine.
While we turned sleeping uneasily a warehouse of food aid was
destroyed, stocks on upbeat sales soared, Australia threatened first
strikes, there was heavy gunfire in the city of Man, the Belarus
ambassador to Japan went missing, a cruise ship caught fire, on yet
another cruise ship many got sick, and the pope made a statement
against xenophobia.
While we turned sleeping uneasily perhaps J Lo gave Ben a
prenuptial demand for sex four times a week.
While we turned sleeping uneasily Liam Gallagher brawled and
irate fans complained that "Popstars: The Rivals" was fixed.
While we turned sleeping uneasily the Supreme Court agreed to
hear the case of whether university admissions may favor racial
minorities.
While we turned sleeping uneasily poachers caught sturgeon in the
reed-filled Caspian, which shelters boar and wolves, and some of
the residents on the space shuttle planned a return flight to the US.
Beloveds, our world is small and isolated.
We live our lives in six hundred square feet about a quarter mile
from the shore on land that is seven hundred square miles and five
thousand miles from the nearest land mass.
Despite our isolation, there is no escape from the news of how
many days are left in the Iraq inspections.
The news poll for today was should we invade Iraq now or should
we wait until the inspections are complete and we tried to laugh
together at this question but our laughter was uneasy and we just
decided to turn off the television that arrives to us from those
other time zones.
Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency
outside of our bed.
It makes me angry that how we live in our bed—full of connected
loving and full of isolated sleep and dreaming also—has no
relevance to the rest of the world.
How can the power of our combination of intimacy and isolation
have so little power outside the space of our bed?
Beloveds, the shuttle is set to return home and out the window of
the shuttle one can see the earth.
"How massive the earth is; how minute the atmosphere," one of
the astronauts notes.
Beloveds, what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this
minute atmosphere?
papal condemnation of xenophobia has continued - for example, from the current pope
ReplyDeleteVATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis condemned xenophobia and discrimination against Europe's gypsies on Monday but said they also must do their part by respecting the law and sending their children to school. The pope made his comments at an audience for several thousand Roma, Sinti and other itinerant peoples that was marked by colorful flamenco-style dancing and traditional music of violins and Spanish guitar. The pope, who has visited several camps of nomads on Rome's outskirts since his election in 2013, condemned the precarious conditions in which many of them live. "We no longer want to see family tragedies where children die of cold or in fires," he said.
In defending their right to keep their culture he said: "The time has come to uproot centuries-old prejudices, preconceptions and reciprocal diffidence that often are at the base of discrimination, racism and xenophobia." But he also said Christian gypsies had to do their part, "avoiding everything that is not worthy of this name: falsehood, fraud, swindles, fighting". He also mentioned drug trafficking, human trafficking and the abuse of gypsy children, many of whom beg on the streets of Europe's big cities. Francis said that while the state had to guarantee education, it was "the duty of adults to see to it that children go to school". [26 october 2015]
speaking of the clash of ethnicities, reading about the battle of little big horn i learned that teen vogue has an article series called og history - og in the sense of 'original gangster', now expanded to 'original' or 'old school' -
ReplyDeleteOG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens.