Dogfish

...

You don't want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

And nobody, of course, is kind,

or mean,

for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to

swim through the fires to stay in

this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish

better wake up and dash themselves away

from the hopeless future that is

bulging toward them.

*

And probably,

if they don't waste time

looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

--Mary Oliver

The Myth of Sisyphus

We tend to think of Sisyphus as a tragic hero, condemned by the gods

to shoulder his rock sweatily up the mountain, and again up the mountain, forever.

The truth is that Sisyphus is in love with the rock. He cherishes every roughness

and every ounce of it. He talks to it, sings to it. It has become the mysterious Other.

He even dreams of it as he sleepwalks upward. Life is unimaginable without it,

looming always above him like a huge gray moon.

He doesn’t realize that at any moment he is permitted to step aside, let the rock

hurtle to the bottom, and go home.

Tragedy is the inertial force of the mind.

--Stephen Mitchell 

Symphony

In the womb, we learn to listen

long before we can even breathe.

Maybe this is our body’s way

of saying, listening is a form of

breathing, and hearing is more 

essential than air. Maybe we spend 

our lives trying to get back to a time 

when the voices around us sounded 

like a distant music, strange song 

of the everyday that plays even now 

when I pause at the street corner 

before crossing, and just listen—

to snippets of phone conversations, 

someone’s radio, a mother calling 

to her child to keep him near—this 

endless symphony of the world.

—James Crews

How does one hate a country, or love one? ... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?

Ursula K LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.

No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

--Omar el Akkad

The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the monsters won't find you. 

 But it's all an illusion, because they die too, these people who roll up their spirits into little tiny balls to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did. 

How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause... It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives. What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. 

--Sophie Scholl, executed 22 February 1943

“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.”

― Naomi Shulman

In a time of hate  

Love is an act of resistance  

In a time of fear  

Faith is an act of resistance  

In a time of misinformation  

Education is an act of resistance  

In a time of poor leadership  

Community is an act of resistance  

In a time like this  

Joy is an act of resistance  

Resist. Resist. Resist. 

–Loryn Brantz

Authoritarians cannot rise if there are strong communities. and if people are acting with joy. That is, you need despair and anger for an authoritarian to rise. Whatever those things are that you bring to the community - do them and do them with joy. And don't stop doing the things you love because you are scared, because that actually is a form of resistance. Showing up and doing things that you love says to an authoritarian: 'You have no place to root here.' " 

--Heather Cox Richardson

Right now all movements for love, care, material well-being, diversity, this earth, and humans having a future on this earth need to remember that we need each other. We must remember that there are organized forces working to disorganize and confuse us, turn us against each other and diffuse our power. We are not immune to the chaos of the world, but we can choose to be a grounding force together.

–Adrienne Maree Brown

You can’t expect anyone to save a world they’re not in love with.

--Josie George

Go to where suffering is aligned with your capacity to meet it. You don’t have to go to death row or live in a monastery. You don’t have to sit with the unsheltered if that’s not your work. Go to where you can care safely and deeply and broaden that capacity over time.

--Roshi Joan Halifax

Light

I want to write of the light

but I do not know

whether words can illuminate

the way it hangs

upon branches and bird wings

and broken things

returning beings to beauty.

Can words spin substance

from sunshine and decay?

Can words cajole

celebration from night-weary

birds?

Can words warm surfaces

of stones and sorrows?

Can words reveal richness

in mundane

and battered

things?

I do not know.

But if we would write

a tomorrow

which is wider than wounds

we have worn,

we might wield words

like benedictions

and remember

blessings

within brokenness,

beginnings

within endings,

and beauty

within all things.

-- Bernadette Miller

Dear Stranger,

1. 

There was never not a bridge 

from your chest to mine. 

My heartbeat was always 

the sound of your feet walking towards me. 

I can’t believe how many years 

I lived without knowing 

the air you were breathing out, 

was the air I was breathing in. 

Forgive me for not saying ‘thank you’

before our lungs had reason to hide.

2.

Fear is what you make it 

and I’ve been trying to make it my teacher. 

When the lesson starts to break me

I remember the dogs in the shelters-- 

how even those we call ‘the mean ones’

will follow their fear to each other’s sides 

in the middle of the night,

make pillows of each other’s chests 

when they think no home is coming.

Almost everyone in the world

is softer than they look.

3.

Do you pray now more than you used to? 

I pray all of the time. I pray to The Big Bang 

and to The Tiny Bang and to The Bangs 

we’ll all have to cut ourselves so we can see 

what beauty can only be seen from 6 feet away.

4. 

Last night, a poet whose writing I love said he hasn’t written 

a single poem since the beginning of the quarantine.

He said every time he’s inclined to 

              he calls someone he loves instead.

5.

The first thing I learned from this virus 

was to question everything wanting to go viral.

The second thing I learned was to dream 

only giant dreams.

6.

A giraffe’s neck is 6 feet long. 

A decade from now will I remember the week

I spent wondering if I could hug a giraffe’s torso 

and not get sick if the giraffe coughed?

I don’t want to forget anything about this. 

Especially not how it feels to worry 

about everyone I love at the same time. 

So much of the world had been doing that already.

7.

If every heart-worthy novelist weeps for days 

before killing a beloved character off, 

how many centuries must god have spent sobbing 

before pressing a pen to the page of this year?

8.

I used to be a gardener in New Orleans. 

Every evening I’d spend almost an hour 

cleaning the earth out of my nails. 

She held on so tight. I loved her more for it.

Later I moved to the desert and was sitting

beside a cactus in my living room

when I heard a hurricane named Katrina 

was about to hit my former home. 

'Save the flowers', I said out loud, 

watching a storm cloud rage its hungry spiral 

across the television screen. 'Save the flowers', I said, 

having no idea we wouldn’t save the people.

9.

When the water left the city I went back,

drove through the 9th Ward to a church

that had been gutted by the storm.

The preacher had spray-painted his phone number 

across the length of the falling building.

There was something about his phone number

being as tall as the door––I couldn’t stop crying.

The world falls apart and people 

become foundation.

--Andrea Gibson

In the 1970s, Pete Seeger was invited to sing in Barcelona, Spain. Francisco Franco's fascist government, the last of the dictatorships that started World War II, was still in power but declining. A pro-democracy movement was gaining strength and to prove it, they invited America's best-known freedom singer to Spain. More that a hundred thousand people were in the stadium, where rock bands had played all day. But the crowd had come for Seeger. 

As Pete prepared to go on, government officials handed him a list of songs he was not allowed to sing. Pete studied it mournfully, saying it looked an awful lot like his set list. But they insisted: he must not sing any of these songs. 

Pete took the government's list of banned songs and strolled on stage. He held up the paper and said, “I've been told that I'm not allowed to sing these songs.” He grinned at the crowd and said, “So I'll just play the chords; maybe you know the words. They didn't say anything about *you* singing them.” 

He strummed his banjo to one song after another, and they all sang. A hundred thousand defiant freedom singers breaking the law with Pete Seeger, filling the stadium with words their government did not want them to hear, words they all knew and had sung together, in secret circles, for years. 

What could the government do? Arrest a hundred thousand singers? It had been beaten by a few banjo chords and the fame of a man whose songs were on the lips of the whole world. 

-- Richard Chamberlain

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

 

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

 

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

 

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

 

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

 

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

 

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

 

lived happily during the war.

Copyright © 2013 by Ilya Kaminsky. 

"There are two kinds of suffering: the suffering which leads to more suffering, and the suffering which leads to the end of suffering. The first is the pain of grasping after fleeting pleasures and aversion for the unpleasant, the continued struggle of most people day after day.

The second is the suffering which comes when you allow yourself to feel fully the constant change of experience - pleasure, pain, joy, and anger - without fear or withdrawal. The suffering of our experience leads to inner fearlessness and peace."

- Venerable Ajahn Chah

you are but a collection of atoms

working together

in temporary harmony

before being dispersed

back into the universe

your earthly task is to help

those atoms

radiate

imagine the simplicity:

you need not

achieve anything

but gently glow

--Daniel Baylis

"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen." 

Rene Daumal

In the Meantime

Meanwhile, flowers still bloom.

The moon rises, and the sun.

Babies smile and somewhere,

Against all the odds,

Two people are falling in love.

Strangers share cigarettes and jokes.

Light plays on the surface of water.

Grace occurs on unlikely streets

And we hold each other fast 

Against entropy, the fires and the flood.

Life leans towards living

And, while death claims all things at the end,

There were such precious times between,

In which everything was radiant

And we loved, again, this world.

--Tom Hirons

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power.

Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”

~Arundhati Roy, ‘The Cost of Living’

The Question

All day, I replay these words:

Is this the path of love?

I think of them as I rise, 

as I wake my children, 

as I wash dishes, 

as I drive too close behind the slow blue Subaru, 

Is this the path of love?

Think of these words as I stand in line at the grocery store, think of them as I sit on the couch with my daughter. 

Amazing how quickly six words become compass, the new lens through which to see myself in the world. 

I notice what the question is not.

Not, 

"Is this right?" 

Not,

"Is this wrong?" 

It just longs to know how the action of existence links us to the path to love.

And is it this? 

Is it this? 

All day,

I let myself be led by the question.

All day I let myself not be too certain of the answer. 

Is it this?

Is this the path of love? I ask as I wait for the next word to come.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, 

Family Recipe

All day, I search for it,

the secret ingredient—

something my father

believed in. He always

made stuffing

with something extra

special something,

then made us guess

what the secret was.

All day, I notice

what goes into a day—

a total of 86,400 seconds,

and in every second

a choice of how

we will meet that second.

If the day is stuffing,

then this day has

some unusual ingredients:

a couple dozen folks

in swimsuits on the sidewalk,

one woman with a dying parrot

she has tucked in her sweater,

a whole garden full of lemon trees,

one ripe hour alone

in the sunshine on a rooftop,

a generous measure of laughter

as my daughter and husband and I

climb a near-vertical hill,

and bittersweet tears

as I think of Dad

and his love of secret ingredients.

All day, the world

shows off its flavors.

All day, I revel in the recipe,

this extraordinary day,

something that can never

be made the same way again.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

"It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.

We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on."

From "Midnight Library" a fantasy novel by Matt Haig

The world is violent and mercurial- it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love -- love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.

--Tennessee Williams