Voices carry over the water
Stillness
Human and goose words
Dramatic sky reaching
colors of my mother's scarf
- Feeling:
calm
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cheqyr said to me some months back.It was something along the lines of "it doesn't really matter how you write, it's the act of writing that's important."
So who cares if I'm not writing my three pages a day every morning? Oh, right, my inner perfectionist, sitting in her walnut-paneled library with her hair up in a bun and her steel-rimmed glasses.
I saw Shortbus last night. Polymorphous perversion, I think that was the term some L7 headshrinker came up with in the 60s to describe anyone who isn't a candidate for membership with the Family Research Council. Polymorphous couplings, real people having unsimulated sex, the importance of female orgasm, John Cameron Mitchell (of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame), a script that was developed by the actors themselves and not approved by a ginormous movie studion -- what's not to love?
Watching it made me feel a bit nostalgic, somewhat regretful. Shortbus takes place in New York City, and in typical New Yorker fashion, the characters and indeed the film itself exudes that confident, annoying assurance that New York is indeed the center of the universe. In my 20s, long before 9-11, I had aspirations to move to NYC. The more I got to know the city, though, the more it overwhelmed me. I grew up in a bedroom community about 45 minutes away by Metro North express train, but very rarely took advantage of my proximity. Later, when I was living at the end of the Hudson line, I fell in love with the place. Later, my love for the place evaporated in the cold, hard light of things like the cost of living, especially compared to my earning potential at the time.
I settled on Boston because it had some of New York's cosmopolitan feel but wasn't as intense and sprawling a place to live. Every city has its sprawl -- its purgatorial rings surrounding its juicy center. Boston may not be as big a Tootsie Pop as New York, but you won't break your teeth trying to get to the chewy center.
Sometimes it seems that people's favorite pastime is to dump on this city, though. While I was waiting for the cross-town shuttle in Harvard Square, two folks started in on the old litany of complaints about My Fair City: it's too segregated, the streets don't make sense, it's not as cosmopolitan as New York, bla bla bla bla bla.
Maybe it was the annoying timbre of the woman's voice, maybe it was that I was going to be late for my meeting, maybe I hadn't had enough leafy greens. Maybe it was because I, a white woman who actually enjoys talking to people of different nationalities, had engaged both of these brown-skinned people in conversation only to watch the conversation devolve into a diatribe about how generally inferior my chosen home town is -- and how racist and segregated to boot. Whatever the reason, I got fed up. And I didn't want to keep silent.
"They want it that way," said the pleasant young man (possibly Latino or Pacific Islander) on his way to work in Central Square to the Indian woman on her way to Beth Israel for a cardiac stress test.
"Who is this mysterious they?" I countered. "Did to think that maybe the white people in this city don't want it to be segregated either?"
They looked at me in shock.
"People love to complain about Boston. It really irritates me. I chose to live in this city, not New York. And you did too, apparently. If you hate the place so much, why don't you leave?"
"I don't think that's very fair," countered the woman. "You can't just follow it up with a prescription like that. It's free speech, you know. You don't have to talk to me."
"You're right, I don't. But it is free speech, and I'm free to tell you how annoying it is when people come along and complain about my town. It's not New York City, it's Boston."
"Oh, I love Boston-" said the nice young man, the same nice young man who'd been complaining about the pattern of the streets and the nasty Powers that Be intent on preserving their lily-white neighborhoods. But his attempt at peacemaking got lost in the shuffle. The woman didn't hear me.
"I wish you luck with your appointment," I said, firm, final, trying -- for my own sake, not hers -- to return to some level of cordiality. And stormed off until I was out of earshot.
What does this all have to do with the movie Shortbus? At one point, one of the characters, suffering under the weight of a profession she's grown to hate, agonizes over her predicament.
-What if I don't have enough money to live in the city? Where would I go? Fresno?
I have no strong desire to live in Fresno. But I'm sure that there are people there who make art. There are people all over the world, and there are other cities too. New York is awesome. I know that. It's got things you won't find anywhere else on the East Coast. But it's not the only game in town. Even in Fresno, I'm sure you can find artists and kinksters and perverts. Thanks to the power of the Intartubes, you can probably find them that much faster.
The reason why this issue affects me so much, of course -- the reason why I raised my voice to some poor woman at a bus stop -- is because my relationship with New York is deep, complicated. Long-standing. In another life I may have ended up in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. Riverside. In another life I would be able to take mass transit 24 hours a day. Would smell that particular salty-muddy smell of Long Island Sound, the confluence of fresh water and salt, that smell I remember from my childhood. Smell it and live in it, along with the smell of hot dogs and car exhaust and hope and desperation. Would live and work and walk and fight and elbow my way through crowds of people, a different mix of people, brown and blue-black and lily-white and all the lovely tones in between, live in a place where the Boston Irish don't predominate. Live on a grid.
But I don't. I live here, a gentle little city built on cowpaths, a conglomeration of villages still with their separate boundaries, a mass transit system color-coded and sprawling like a web built by a drunk spider. A place where you can drive 20 minutes up the road and go cross-country skiing for $30, or live your whole life jammed up against your neighbors and car-free. A place where gay couples can legally marry, where indy bands and artists thrive and work and play, a place where health care is a right and not a privilege.
But I grew up in the shadow of New York City. It's my white whale. It's a dream I used to have, a fantasy that needed to stay a fantasy. It's someplace I like to visit once or twice a year. It's not my home.
My home is here, with all the web of community and love and memories I've built here for the past decade. My home is here, with Army Guy.
Which is the other reason Shortbus makes me nostalgic. Nostalgia isn't the same thing as memory. Nostalgia filters memories through a pink filter. It erases all the angst and loneliness, all the alienation and uncertainty, and leaves just the glamour, the excitement. The fantasy of youth.
Youth isn't wasted on the young. Only the young have the resilience and the stamina to put up with it. As much as I like to look back fondly on my 20s, I wouldn't relive them.
And I wouldn't re-make the choices I've made. Well, maybe the ones around unsecured debt. But not the lovers, the relationships, the moves, the experiences. I don't regret my wild and crazy past, and I don't regret my commitment to Army Guy.
"I'm afraid you're going to build up a head of steam over all these parts of yourself I'm asking you to give up," he said.
The fact that he even cares about that makes me love him more. He'd never steal the skin of a Selkie. He'd sit on the shore and talk with her until she folded it up of her own free will and tucked it into the thatch of their house.
- Location:La Officina de Casa
- Feeling:
contemplative - Listening to:morning sounds
Army Guy calls just a little after 7:00, and I answer the phone saying, "Just ten minutes!"
"Wake up Frances!" he shouts into the phone. Our own little ritual.
I get up.
I get to get up today.
I get to drive to work -- I get to have a job to drive to!
I get to have supportive conversations with my reports.
I get to see the beautiful puffy clouds.
I get to do some real work.
I get to enjoy springtime in Boston.
I get to be alive.
- Feeling: calm
Until he started in on Simon & Garfunkle's The Boxer and I couldn't help but sing out, Garfunkel's high tenor part over the singer's lower one, not loud enough to drown him out or take him over, but he heard me. I hope he didn't mind.
The Boxer -- the song of all the young hopefuls who come to the city.
I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles,
such are promises
all I suggest, still a man hears what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest, mmm hmmm...
When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy
in the company of strangers
in the quiet of the railway station
running scared
laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
where the ragged people,
looking for the places only the would know
Li li li, li le li li li li...
Asking only workmen's wages, I come looking for a job
but I get no offers
just a come-on from the whores on 7th avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there, oo la le la le la la la...
Now the years are rolling by me,
they are rocking evenly
and I am older than I once was
and younger than I'll be but that's not unusual,
nor is it strange
after changes upon changes,
we are more or less the same
after changes we are more or less the same
Li li li, li le li li li li...
And I'm laying out my winter clothes
wishing I was gone, going home,
where the New York City winters are ableeding me
leading me to going home
In the clearing stands a boxer
and a fighter by his trade
and he carries a reminder
of every glove that laid him out or cut him till he cried out,
in his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving I am leaving" but the fighter still remains
He still remains
Li li li, li le li li li li...
- Location:La Officina de Casa
- Feeling: uplifted
- Listening to:The Boxer -- Simon & Garfunkle
I met up with some of my circle sisters last Thursday night at the Forest Hills Lantern Festival. There are actually about three different events of this type in Jamaica Plain every year. It's inspired by a Japanese Buddhist tradition that honors the spirits of the ancestors and is very well-attended. The image of hundreds of hand-decorated lanterns floating across the waters of the pond as the light leaves the sky is really magical. Lots of people bring cameras on tripods to capture the event. My friend Butterfly took a photo on her camera phone and emailed it to me (I've posted it here), but I refrained from photographing, partly because I knew I wouldn't be able to get a good shot with my camera phone, and partly because I wanted to experience the event myself without the intervention of technology. There are tons of photos of the lantern festival on the web. I found Innusa's and ReallyStrangeGirl's flickr sets to be particularly beautiful. Still, nothing captures the experience like being in the middle of it.I took the Orange Line from Green Street to Forest Hills and followed the stream of people heading toward the festival. It was one of those hot, heavy, dreamlike evenings we get in July, and the grounds around the pond were filled with people on blankets. My circle sisters had camped out right in front of the performance space, and it was such a wonderful feeling to arrive to see a group of women holding a space for me. By the time I arrived, the festival had been going on for about an hour and a half. I attempted to get a lantern for myself, but by the time I got to the tent where you could purchase a lantern and have a calligrapher paint a word on the rice paper, there was a huge crowd. I didn't feel like waiting in line, so I returned to the blanket to watch the tail end of the Taiko Drummers' performance. I wish I'd gotten there earlier so I could have watched the entire thing; Japanese culture fascinates me, especially the traditional forms.
My circle sisters made beautiful drawings on their lanterns. Although this tradition is meant to honor the ancestors, people at this festival seem to use it as a way of sending out all kinds of energy and prayers. Each of my sisters has something fairly major to release right now: one of them is going through a divorce, the other just split up with her long-term fiance, one is embarking on a new romance, and the last has been recovering from cancer surgery. But for the first time in a couple of years, I have really nothing to release. I have good news. I am in love, my job is going well, and I am overall very happy. I was nice to have some good news to share with the circle and to be able to listen and give my support about my sisters' own tragedies. The Wheel keeps turning.
When everyone walked down to the water's edge to place their lanterns in the water, I stayed on the blanket. I watched the many kinds of people milling around and soaked in the atmosphere of Jamaica Plain. Each neighborhood and community in the Boston Metro Area has its own unique flavor. The prevailing wisdom among people who do not live in Jamaica Plain is that it's geographically isolated and difficult to get to. There is definitely a truth to that, but in the past few months I've found that getting there is not nearly as difficult as people make it out to be. And the neighborhood itself is quite wonderful. I've been considering moving there at some point. Of course, I'd hate to give up my lovely and affordable apartment in Cambervilleton (Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington), but I find the atmosphere of the neighborhood much more appealing.
I lay back and looked up at the sky as people milled around me. It was a blue-green, tinged at the edges with the burnt orange of approaching sunset. Trees ringed the edges of my vision.
Once the sun was down completely, the crowds dissipated. The five of us made a circuit of the pond, watching the slowly changing spectacle of the lanterns on the water. They followed the invisible lines of current and wind, and as the daylight faded away they looked like a line of souls marching into the other world.
It would have been nice to paint "forgiveness" on a lantern and send that message off to my father's spirit beyond the veil. But there will be other opportunities to do so. That night was meant for other people's releases.
Sadness comes apart in the water. Over the course of the last two years, though, my sadness has come apart on dry land. I have no grieving left to do, and nothing to share but joy.
- Feeling: contemplative
High summer breezes, tall trees
Rustle in the wind
- Feeling:
fugly
And the lilacs, ah, the lilacs. Everything smells of flowers.
- Feeling:
happy
Okelle's Spring 2008 Flickr Set
- Location:La Officina de Casa
- Feeling: uplifted
- Listening to:Sufjan Stevens - Chicago
Nothing captures the truth
Nothing captures the truth of the image:
the luminous quality
of the center of the pitcher
and the glass in the morning light,
that particular color of off-white/cream/not-beige-lighter-than-beige/linen
the linen of the curtain draping
to the floor, the shading of the drape
that you learned how to evoke all those years ago in the classroom
in the early light with charcoal
the classroom with the geraniums struggling in their pot by the window,
the window and the rusty bannister that led to the roof
although no one ever went out there,
we were bent over our sheets of paper,
first with permanent marker so we learned how to draw a line with confidence
and then with the charcoal and the pastel
and the trip to the sideboard where the hairdryers lay waiting
for us to finish off our washes and dip
our watercolor brushes for the next thing,
the colors mixed
painstaking
but never quite right
and your camera, your camera phone now,
none of it ever captures the truth of the scene you try to capture,
the cherry blossoms set to bloom but not yet, not yet,
the startle-surprise of the first green buds
under the still-lowering sky
and now weeks later, those same buds wafting out a scent
you think is cinnamon but no cardamom but no
something familiar but certainly not of this place
and the yellow flowers multiplied you recognize now for jasmine
jasmine from the incense stick, the scent packed across mountains
and cities from trucks and forklifts,
packed powdered and tight in boxes within boxes,
bagged and bought and sold
and placed in a fireproof receptacle and lit
and here blooming before you at the end of someone's driveway,
someone who planted a garden they haven't had time to weed
nothing will capture it
or the swans gliding majestic
over the surface of the pond,
which itself changes every day
and no one can capture the way the sparkles glint in the light,
moving, like the swans, majestic,
oh they try yes they try but nothing
nothing captures it not even words
Frances Donovan
May 1, 2008
- Feeling:
awed
2. The ice broke. An email about bacteria count.
3. This morning, wavelets.
4. Will the swans mate this year?
5. I want to slide into the water, skin to water's skin. I want to guide him there, swim the dark waters with him. Fearful of the things below. Rotting leaves.
6. The cold makes you vital. Zip the tiny jacket, slip into sleet.
7. For Puritans, dancing is a sin.
8. Homeland is a beach in Santa Cruz. He surfed there. In the valley beyond, he died in a public men's room.
9. My mother's dancing makes me cringe. Unabashed. Skin to water's skin.
10. Tilt the map. Loose nuts roll to the Pacific.
11. Snow on tulips.
12. Curtain of sleet in the streetlamp. I am alive. Yes. Alive. Yes
13. At the egg moon. Alive.
Frances Donovan
March, April 2008
- Feeling: alive, yes, alive
The image above is actually a bit different from (the first image of his work that I saw) but shares the same dreamlike, flowing quality combined with realistic representation of the human form. Now that I think of it, there's an anime quality to what little I've seen of Ushiro's work. What initially struck me about the image, though, was that it provoked questions: Are those two girls pressing up on each other? (As someone who delights when I find representations of queers in the media I hoped the answer was yes.) Does the difference in color palette between the two indicate that one is "real" and the other a ghost or astral projection? Turns out I read the artist's intention about color correctly. This is what he says in his artist's statement:
Vietnamese, Hungarians, and Zimbabweans all share this common story of a Pressing Ghost. Usually occurring when one awakes from sleep, is the sensation of limbs & legs going numb, heavy pressure felt near the chest region, and the helpless victims inability to move. The Hawaiians believed this to be the result of "Pule Ana 'ana," a sorcery chant that includes praying someone to death. Such conditions can also be medically explained as a delay in chemical release in the nervous system.
Ushiro's bio says that he was transplanted from Maui to California, and by his last name I'm guessing that he is at least part Japanese. He mentions in his bio that he has experience in the film industry; I wonder if this experience has influenced his work, or whether I am right about his heritage and that his connection to Japanese culture has influenced it as well. Of course, I know plenty of anglos, myself included, whose work has been influenced by elements of Japanese culture, including anime.
Ushiro also shows a degree of technical savvy not apparent in other artists: he has a drawing blog as well as a stand-alone website.
In other news, a friend sent me this link to a fun little Shockwave app, just in time for spring: Go here and click and drag your mouse all over the screen. Yay flowers! Yay springtime! If they wanted to make it a Boston-style flower garden, they'd have to add some snowflakes once the flowers had sprouted. So far this year, no snow on tulips. But the tulips aren't up yet, and, you know, global warming...
- Location:Couch
- Feeling:
still waking up - Listening to:Cell phone alarm + gentle traffic shushing
the heart opens in the midst of snow
the heart and something else
to say yes,
to say alive, yes
winter yes
dark yes
streetlamp and its scattered veil yes
heart rises
triumph yes
death yes
darkness yes
alive oh
good underwear oh
wool oh
cotton spandex silk oh yes
the layers conquering you yes
in the midst of darkness in the midst of snow behind
inside it through and out the other end black hole
of winter singularity yes
to zero
and to the other side
of zero.
Frances Donovan
February 22, 2008
Spy Pond and Minuteman Trail, Arlington, MA
- Location:La Officina de Casa
- Feeling: exhilarated
- Listening to:Cars in the snow
The issue is not clinical care, although I'm no expert on what makes a good eye doctor. The issue is communication to the patient about out of pocket expenses. When I protested the charges, they told me to talk to the doctor. Getting in to SEE the doctor is slightly more difficult than getting in to see the Pope. When I finally managed to get in to see her, the first thing she told me is that she does not talk to patients about billing issues. I finally paid the $40 they have been harassing me about just to never have to hear from them again.
After a year and a half of attempting to get a pair of contact lenses that ACTUALLY CORRECT MY VISION, I'm out about $300. I should have checked with the Better Business Bureau first. I'm not the first one to complain about their billing and collection practices. I filed a complaint with them as well. I don't really expect to get my money back, but I do hope to spread the word about what a horrible, horrible eye doctor's office they are. DO NOT USE.
- Feeling:
livid
2. Despite what the last poem might imply, I am in fact very happy with the way things have worked out with the new boy. I'm not in love. We have a very friendly rapport. Sex and sushi, a nice hug, and then a see you later. And frankly, I'm more likely to go mad from loving a woman than a man. This whole business with bisexual identity and the personal and the political has been with me since I first came out. What's new this year? I've come to accept that I'm into guys right now. Oh, and still attracted to women. I'm not ashamed about it. It's part of who I am, and it doesn't define me.
3. Had a good session with my specialist on Monday. He's been tracking my chronic illness since the turn of the century. After 17 years of having it, I know a good doctor from a bad doctor, and this doctor is amazing. I see him in person about once a month, and he's more than happy to do phone consults for minor medication adjustments. I'm incredibly lucky to have him as a doctor, especially since he's not taking any new patients. Among other things, he's on the faculty of the Harvard School of Medicine, but that's not what makes him a good clinician. It's his warmth and his belief that I ultimately know what's best for my body; he offers his expertise in one particular aspect of caring for it, but he sees me as a complete human being and not a disease to be treated. He reminded me that while I may very well need to be on medication for the rest of my life, it doesn't mean that I can't move to China if I want. He has clients who live all over the world. I love that man like a father -- well, no. He's a hell of a lot more consistent than my father ever was.
- Feeling:
busy
Used and independent bookstores, along with cafes, are a large part of what makes a funky neighborhood funky. But more and more of these locally owned, independent businesses are getting priced out as rents increases and as other businesses distribute the same goods and services in a more efficient, higher-profit-turning sort of way.
Unfortunately, no chain store, no Starbuck's will ever posses the soul of an independent, locally owned business. McIntyre and Moore, the Tastee, Wordsworth, Cafe Paradiso: these are all casualties of gentrification in Cambridge and Somerville. How long before Cafe Pamploma, Million Year Picnic, and the Trident succumb as well?
[Edit: The store is not, in fact, closing, but moving to a less conspicuous location. I'm glad they'll still be around, but still irked that they won't be as visible a presence in Davis Square.]
- Feeling:
disappointed
Other signs
- The geese are flying. A lot. So lovely. Fly fly fly!
- I took the A/C down to the basement. And brought it up again.
- Jeans! I can wear jeans! And long-sleeved shirts!
- Traffic's back. Big time.
- Workload's back. Big time. Which means more meetings. Which means driving from place to place. In that traffic I just mentioned.
- Fancy cabbage (aka ornamental kale) and mums spring from mulched edges of lawns, as if by magic.
- Location:La Officina de Casa
- Feeling: full of vata
- Arlington and Somerville both have active and venerable garden clubs. Somerville, like Cambridge, has many wonderful examples of urban gardens. September in New England is awesome because the fruits of the season -- both the edible and non-edible styles -- are still resplendent and the days mild enough to enjoy them. September coasts on a gentle incline before autumn's gaudy last gasps.
- A new acronym I've been hearing a lot about: API. Like many acronyms, I have a notion of what it's about, but like AJAX I haven't worked with any directly. Here on teh Intarwebs, I feel safer admitting ignorance. Anyone worked with an API? Willing to share thoughts/experiences about same? You can pwn the n00b if you like ::offers ass in baboon-like submission::
- viciouswishes is my new favorite flister. Wow, that sounds dirty :) I wouldn't go so far as to call us Intarweb friends (like jenunderscore_), since we haven't had any private conversations or declared undying affection for one another, but I like what I've read of her blog and admire and am challenged by her online frankness. It's rare to find someone who is more frank than I. Of course, I was cowed by the feedback I got during my annual review regarding my communication style. It's one thing to know that I can rub people the wrong way sometimes with my outspokenness. It's another to know that my ability to bring in the bank is contingent upon same. Oh well. Turn that one over to the Goddess. I found her via International Blog Against Racism Week; nex0s linked to one of her postings, and I found nex0s via la_directora, a friend I know from real life. Teh intarwebs are alive and well, connecting people tangentially for over ten years. Yayyyyy!
- viciouswishes has a roundup of her cross-fandom favorite men and women here. I liked what she had to say about "The Accidental Hero:"
They might seem like bad boys, but they're just to weird/smart/emotionally damaged/loyal to be so. Jayne [Cobb, Firefly] has his hat that his mom knitted. Deadpool [X-Men] is crazy. Sheppard [Stargate Atlantis] likes ferris wheels. Ryan [Oz] is a horrible, yet wonderful, big brother. They also end up doing shit that makes them survive life when you think they should be dead/in jail/living on the streets and saves others. - I watched the first DVD of Stella last night, and the extra about the history of the show was very educational. I'm a fan of this quirky, bizarre, ironic, satirical sort of humor. The fact that the three creators met at NYU and created the act organically during an eight-year stint at Fez in New York City (I was guessing Brooklyn, but a Google search indicates it was on the Upper West Side) does not surprise me. It makes me homesick for the tri-state area. I know that one of the reasons I liked the Daily Show was because it was informed by the gritty, real quality of NYC. For various reasons, I've been feeling more and more of a pull toward New York. I'm not sure if I'd ever be able to sustainably live there, but my visits always make the fantasy seem workable. If Hartford was "practice" for living in Boston, perhaps Boston is "practice" for living in NYC. I don't know. I'm very comfortable in my one-town-over suburban hideaway right now. But I also know the Universe has a way of carrot-and-sticking me out of my comfort zone when it decides it's time. Right now, I'll keep concentrating on my eight-year-plan of paying down debt and building up a nest egg.
- Feeling:
stupid uterus
Dreamy Slumber Party
WHEN: Saturday, September 29, 2007
WHERE: Lush Boston | 166 Newbury Street | 617.375.5874
Everyone loves a slumber party! Come spend your day with us getting ready for your fun night. Stock up on face and foot masks to get your skin looking its very best and then check out all our fantastic products designed to get you getting into dreamland as quickly as possible with beautiful lavender-scented dreams! RSVP and come dressed in your funkiest pajamas to get entered in a raffle to win a Golden Slumbers gift!
RSVP: Boston@lush.com
Back to School Party
WHEN: Saturday, September 15, 2007 , 2:00 PM - 8:00 PM
WHERE: Lush Harvard Square | 30 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA | 617.497.5874
Not quite ready to hit the books? Come to Lush for the first party of the semester and treat yourself to some great school year goodies. Whoosh temple balm will help get you awake and focused for those early morning lectures, while Flying Fox shower gel will make you smell better than anything in the cafeteria. Bring your student ID. and your school spirit for a special treat! When you spend $40 or more, you'll receive a goody bag full of treats for your dorm.
RSVP: harvardsquare@lush.com
- Feeling:
bouncy
Lines composed on the BU Bridge in late summer
The city rises above the river,
glittering jewels in the sky, raised by hands
dirtied and worn, rounded and warm, all part
of a living organism so vast,
so interdependent it spreads like a
web over the deeper, older chassis
of the Earth itself, crowding out the life
that came before. But with vegetable
intelligence, weeds rise from cracks,
geese nest on the river under bridges,
algae sprouts in the depths, and water-plants,
and irises, and cockroaches, and rats,
a plethora of life, still adapting
with the same inexorable prowess
that drove the ivy through the windowpane,
that drove baby through the birth canal,
that drove the farmers to create the corn
rattling from the silos and into trains
that pass over the bridge, into the heart
of the city that rises above it.
Frances Donovan
August 11, 2007
September 3, 2007
- Feeling: accomplished
the clean-dirty smell of water in a pool of earth
the opening faces on the bike path
the rising sweat of the day
- Location:La Officina de Casa
- Feeling: athletic
- Listening to:rush hour's beginnings
