We speak in tongues

"I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck.

We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. …

I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself."

Jeanette Winterson

Astonished

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Mary Oliver

This God, this laughter of the morning

Welcome Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

Anne Sexton, 'The Awful Rowing Toward God'

Why nothing is really yours in Asia :)

I happened to meet this guy who does research on linguistics and Applied Artificial Intelligence. He posts interesting questions on the evolution of certain language structures, and does intriguing comparisons between Indian languages and others - and would love to hear other viewpoints and observations, since these are all hypotheses.

Linguistic anthropology is such a fascinating subject!!

Funky language features – the mystery of the missing possessive verb

http://aiaioo.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/funky-language-features-the-mystery-of-the-missing-possessive-verb/

Funky language features – the third spatial deictic reference in Japanese, Korean and Tamil

http://aiaioo.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/funky-language-features-the-third-spatial-deictic-reference-in-japanese-korean-and-tamil/

Playing the Chords

A Rainy Morning

A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.

You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.

Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.

So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.

Ted Kooser, 'Delights & Shadows'

Unsayable

Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the act of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,
and long experience of love, – just what is wholly
unsayable.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Now I seek mornings

"At the time (in my youth), I was seeking out late afternoons, drab outskirts, and unhappiness; now I seek mornings, the center of town, peace."

Jorge Luis Borges
Prologue to 'Fervor de Buenos Aires'

https://picasaweb.google.com/106491954401233999557/NowISeekMornings

The Wolf

After Love

Afterward, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.

These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.

Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

Maxine Kumin

Pour yourself out like a fountain

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII
Rainer Maria Rilke

Will the change. Want the transformation. Be inspired
by the flame where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself into sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to live gray and numb?
What’s frightened turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain. Flow into
the knowledge that what you are seeking
often finishes at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel, dares you to become wind.

Translated by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips
These T-shirts we fold
into perfect white
squares
These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl
This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out
This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of the sky
This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world.

Naomi Shihab Nye

On the day of your favorite color

Here is the day of pumpkins,
their hollow heads lit and leering. Here
is the stripped sweetness of candy corn
cupped in my hands. Here is fall
swirling the leaves into a storm of red-
gold fire. Here is the sunset,
shorter now. And here is memory,
spilling from its orange coat:
your mandarin sheets, your russet
couch, kisses the color of burning.
Here is the day of heartbreak
ripened to glow. Here is the day of ghosts.

Lauren Kizi-Ann Alleyne

A book of candles

Become Becoming

Wait for evening.
Then you'll be alone.

Wait for the playground to empty.
Then call out those companions from childhood:

The one who closed his eyes
and pretended to be invisible.
The one to whom you told every secret.
The one who made a world of any hiding place.

And don't forget the one who listened in silence
while you wondered out lout:

Is the universe an empty mirror? A flowering tree?
Is the universe the sleep of a woman?

Wait for the sky's last blue
(the color of your homesickness).
Then you'll know the answer.

Wait for the air's first gold (that color of Amen).
Then you'll spy the wind' barefoot steps.

Then you'll recall that story beginning
with a child who strays in the woods.

The search for him goes on in the growing
shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock's face
is not his father's face.

And the hands behind the clock's hands
are not his mother's hands.

All of Time began when you first answered
to the names your mother and father gave you.

Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.
Then, you can trade places with the wind.

Then you'll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.

Li-Young Lee, 'Behind My Eyes'

I felt I knew you

"I ride the NYC subway trains, usually in the evening when the seats are full. I focus on the shape of the space between the person sitting next to me and myself. I attempt to mentally and emotionally re-sculpt that space. In my mind, I reshape it- from the stiff and guarded space between strangers to the soft and yielding space between friends. I direct all my energy to this space between us. When the space palpably changes, and I completely feel like the stranger sitting next to me is my friend, I rest my head on that person's shoulder…"

I felt I knew you

http://www.georgeferrandi.com/108756/899221/all-projects/it-felt-like-i-knew-you-%282012-ongoing%29

Angels

In the Library

There's a book called
"A Dictionary of Angels."
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

Charles Simic, 'In the Library (for Octavio)'

Tenebrism

"Active from 1595 – 1610, Caravaggio was a major transitional figure in art moving from exaggerated Mannerism to a highly naturalistic style, illuminated with powerful light and shadow.  This dramatic use of light to intensify an image, also known as tenebrism, clearly influenced Spanish artists of the era."

http://daydreamtourist.com/2013/12/02/spanish-baroque/