The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosives and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own.
–Rod Serling
Category Archives: Humanities
Cat Nap
Cat Nap
The cat comes
on little fog feet
sneaking toward me
lying prone. She
heaves her body
onto the ottoman
moves to my thigh
her paws pressing
into my flesh.
She bursts into a
roar of purring
kneads my stomach
and ample breasts
reliving kittenhood
memories of suckling
finally settling
herself across me
pats my cheek
and closes her eyes.
Quenchable
Quenchable
A toothless pinecone sits abandoned
on a tan patch of crispy grass
that serves as a lawn.
Pointed brown pine needles
long enough to knit with tangle
among singed ivy leaves in cemented
dirt. I sit at a sun-bleached
table, scrawling on a dry page
inked with a Rorschach tea stain.
The earth is sullen.
September. Everything not
artificially watered sits parched,
patient, dormant, waiting for
autumn rains that will make roots
gasp with relief. Soon dust and water
will meet, mingle, dance in rivulets.
Gullies of debris will rush to the
sewer to merge with the bay.
Magician rain will vanish smog.
Crumpled tissue mountains will
bloom emerald green, cloaked with
clouds and adorned with shafts of
sunlight. The sky, no longer a
one-dimensional flat blue, will
carry chilly news of the coming
season, a season to replenish.
We are so thirsty. So ready.
Rush Hour
Rush Hour
The gray man in the next lane over
digs into his nose, oblivious
to the fact that there are six lanes
of witnesses to his nasal excavation.
The bumper in front of me touts peace
and the sun winks through a crystal
pendant hanging from the rearview mirror
while a leather-tanned hand dangles
out the window flicking cigarette ash.
Somewhere behind me the air
is punctuated by the seismic bass
thump of some cholo’s rap music.
Words are garbled but I can feel
the beat in my bones as Dr. Dre
and Snoop serenade us.
To my left a sleek black Beamer
shelters a woman who appears
to be talking to no one. Then
she tucks her hair behind her ear
and I see the earpiece. She’s not
insane (yet).
Loneliness That Strong
At times I was so lonely I was amazed I didn’t just expire right there on the spot, as if loneliness that strong were a divine thunderbolt that could strike me down at any moment, whether I was in bed, at a crowded dinner table, or at an empty roadside stop.
–Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face
Know the Way
Those who know the Way, know the way to create a space for people to feel their beauty.
–Jack Ricchiuto, Jack/Zen
That Most Irrefutable Truth
I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else would be measured. I know now that this isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things. Society is no help. It tells us again and again that we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else, only to leave our original faces behind to turn into ghosts that will inevitably resent and haunt us. As I sat there in the café, it suddenly occurred to me that it is no mistake when sometimes in films and literature the dead know they are dead only after being offered that most irrefutable proof: they can no longer see themselves in the mirror.
–Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face
A Little Desire
A Little Desire
His kisses like cotton candy
melting quickly, barely touching my lips.
I devour them.
His fingers stroke the nape of my neck.
A chord of need rang through me,
vibrating up from between my legs,
snaking around my hips,
winding through my lips, impaling me.
I fell
away from myself, turned
inside out,
inhaled,
and floated away.
What It Was Like
I learned the balance between letting loose and keeping control, allowing my body to react impulsively to the beat and directing that impulse into a more meditated, skilled movement. It was all about rhythm, about finding the place where the music’s rhythm met my own. As I danced I thought how this wasn’t all that different from making art. Every once in a while I would think, fleetingly, that this must also be what it was like to act sexually in the world. But mostly I just treated the experience academically.
–Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face
Truth and Beauty
Reading and writing poetry brought together everything that had ever been important to me. I could still dwell in the realm of the senses, but now I had a discipline, a form for them. Rather than a way to create my own private life and shun the world, the ability to perceive was now a way to enter the world. Language itself, words and images, could be wrought and shaped into vessels for the truth and beauty I had so long hungered for. Most amazing, one could fail, one could make mistake after mistake and learn from each one.
–Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face
Five Quotes Meme
As seen over at Set Free, I went to this site and went through random quotes until I had five that had “spoken” to me. In this way, through these quotes, you learn a little something about me.
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.
–Unknown
I think people don’t place a high enough value on how much they are nurtured by doing whatever it is that totally absorbs them.
–Jean Shinoda Bolen
Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
–R. Buckminster Fuller
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
— Agnes Repplier
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.
–Joseph Conrad
A Book That
changed my life?
The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness by Pema Chodron
I’ve read more than once?
Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing by May Sarton
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
I’d want on a desert island?
The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Desert Island (though I don’t think it’s been written yet)
made me laugh?
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore
made me cry?
Charlotte’s Web by E. B White
I wish had been written?
Since I don’t know all that’s been written, how do I know what hasn’t been written?
I wish had never been written?
One that I just finished reading: A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance by Jane Juska
I’m currently reading?
I am about to start The Onion Girl by Charles de Lindt and
The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol
I’ve been meaning to read?
Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery by Starhawk
The Grace in Dying: How We Are Transformed Spiritually as We Die by Kathleen Singh
all the books listed in 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader’s Guide by Erica Bauermeister
(and so many more!)
I was tagged by Laurel. If you want to play along, consider yourself tagged. Leave a comment to share that you did with a link to your blog (or just put the list in the comments!
The Feel Sorry For Me Post
From August 1 to September 5, these are the days off I have from work:
Saturday, August 5
Saturday, August 19
Sunday, August 27
September 2, 3, 4 (Labor Day weekend)
Most of my workdays this month have been 10-12 hours long.
I am working so hard to make Hands On Bay Area better and better all the time. Doesn’t this inspire you, compel you, make your palms simply itch to support my effort to raise funds for them by making a donation? You can donate as little as $1.00. You don’t have to use a credit card online. You can also send a check or cash for me to submit to the agency. (Send me an email to get more information. The address is kathryn at pobox dot com.) You can be anonymous if you want, and you won’t have to provide your address and phone number (to protect you from future junk mail and solicitations).
You would make my day! And of course you want to make my day. Right?
Show me the money love!
Riches Found
Space is limited at Chez Mindful Life, and I have gradually filled the bookcases we have. Lately I wanted to read a pair of books that, while they were sure to be good reads, just weren’t worth spending money on, especially since I would only read them once and don’t have storage space. One copy was at my local city library. The other was listed as being “on the shelves,” but after repeated searches without success, I concluded it must be lost. So I searched elsewhere.
What I discovered amazed me. You see, some years ago a law was passed in California that removed residency requirements for public libraries. This means any person with a California residence and a photo I.D. to prove it can get a library card at any, and as many, libraries as she wants. This means I could actually get a library card for the Los Angeles library system. (Though that would be impractical, there is something tantalizing in the thought.) For years I have been a supporter (financially and civically) of public libraries, but I rarely used them. It’s time to walk the talk!
After discovering this mother lode, I’ve visited all the libraries closest to me to get cards (collect one! collect ’em all!) and thus was able to borrow the book I wanted (plus several more). In addition, each of these libraries offers inter-library loan services. Here is a list of my keys to free knowledge.
- Santa Clara City Library
- Santa Clara County Libraries: Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Saratoga (each library has its own website)
- Mountain View Public Library
- Sunnyvale Public Library
- Los Gatos Public Library
- Peninsula Library Foundation: Atherton Library, Belmont Library, Brisbane Library, Burlingame, Cañada College Library, College of San Mateo Library, Daly City, East Palo Alto Library, Foster City Library, Half Moon Bay Library, Menlo Park, Millbrae Library, Pacifica Library, Portola Valley Library, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Carlos Library, San Mateo City, Skyline College Library, South San Francisco, Woodside Library (each library has its own website)
- Palo Alto Public Library
- San Jose University & Public Libraries
I could also get a card for the San Francisco Public Library as well as the East Bay (Alameda and Contra Costa counties), but I may hold off. I think 40 miles is my geographic limit for borrowing books, and those are well beyond! Then again, there’s a brand new branch of the SF library just across the street from where I park on those days I drive to the city (and it’s less than a mile from the train station).
Still Life
Still Life
Two weary oranges sit in a cracked
wooden bowl. In California there
is always a navel to contemplate,
but I have abandoned these dimpled globes
for sexier fruit.
They have company. Three bananas
lean against the curved belly
of the bowl, their sunny skins thinning
into a melanoma of ripeness.
The air is sweet with ruination.
In the rotting fruit, decadence born
of carelessness and disconnection. Looking
closer, the brown hands that cut, plucked,
sorted and packed, worked
many hours for few dollars. Dusty hands,
scraped and cracked like the bowl.
—
This poem is a result of an exercise suggested by Jack Martin.