I woke up this morning and I hear the radio talking about how to write romantic novels, and the writer describes that the plot requires that there are at first 2 people, then there is a conflict. And the conflict requires that at least one person must sacrifice. Sacrifice for the sake of love, and that's what gives the romance its weight and I think about the people I'm willing to sacrifice for and the people I'm not, and how sad or disappointed I was that I can't be around the people I'd want to sacrifice for, or that there's nothing I can sacrifice for them. But then I thought about what I'm supposed to do with my life and why I got to school, and I think I didn't try because I was scared. But I'd rather not be in a situation where I admit that I'm scared. And I remember Martin Luther King said that faith is like taking the first step without knowing where the ladder goes. And this is relevant because I find that I'm so much more confident & motivated if I know exactly to the last detail where I'm going and all the payoffs. To the point where at times I'd rather do absolutely nothing than try at something I think I'd fail at. But I've been searching for a reason not to do that, because I just end up lying on my bed all day.
Anyway, all these thoughts are kind of comping together in this interesting way--that radio bit about sacrifice and the Martin Luther King bit about faith, fitting in nicely with my school situation and emotional situation because, in conclusion, I don't want to be scared of making sacrifices for the sake of love for vague people, lacking characteristics in your head.
I have faith to sacrifice for love, but not just one person but for people, for humanity. What's so scary about loving a faceless person? What's so scary about love having its own face--not the face of a human?
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Martin Luther King
"True altruism is more than the capacity to pity; it is the capacity to empathize. Pity is feeling sorry for someone; empathy is feeling sorry with someone."
"There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us"
"As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent."
"There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us"
"As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent."
Monday, August 22, 2011
When Ure Heart Turns Cold
2 Kristen & My Other Friends Who Wonder
When your heart turns cold
it causes your soul 2 freeze
It spreads throughout your spirit
like a ruthless feeling disease
The walls that once were down
now stand firm and tall
Safe from hate/love, pain/joy
until u feel nothing at all
When ure heart turns cold
a baby's cry means nothing
A dead corpse is trivial
Mothers neglecting children is daily
Loneliness becomes your routine friend
Death seems like tranquility
Sleeping is never pleasant
it u even sleep at all
u forget ideals and turn off the reason
2 make sure the product gets sold
You don't understand how I behave
Just wait till your heart turns Cold!
-Tupac Shakur
When your heart turns cold
it causes your soul 2 freeze
It spreads throughout your spirit
like a ruthless feeling disease
The walls that once were down
now stand firm and tall
Safe from hate/love, pain/joy
until u feel nothing at all
When ure heart turns cold
a baby's cry means nothing
A dead corpse is trivial
Mothers neglecting children is daily
Loneliness becomes your routine friend
Death seems like tranquility
Sleeping is never pleasant
it u even sleep at all
u forget ideals and turn off the reason
2 make sure the product gets sold
You don't understand how I behave
Just wait till your heart turns Cold!
-Tupac Shakur
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
How to be Pretty!
“
“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed; never throw out anyone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair.
The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.
The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years.”
”
“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed; never throw out anyone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair.
The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.
The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years.”
”
| — | Audrey Hepburn |
Are You Ready to Rock?/Wear Your Love like Heaven
Are You Ready to Rock?
…nobody said that what was cannot be changed. This is an adventure in light waves & new days tiptoeing across a poisoned land selling flowers to soul survivors. We smile for Tina Turner & those fabulous legs that finally carried her to freedom. We hear you, honey, walking to freedom with thirty-six cents & a gas credit card. What’s Love Got to Do With It when it leaves you brain damaged, bleeding in the snow, blind, limbless, discarded & deserted. Jerry Hall says you can never be sure your man is not gonna run off & leave you. That’s terrible. I’m not being sarcastic. I feel like someone poured acid on my face & is banding in my dreams with telephone poles.
oh oh OH
please don’t leave me
please don’t leave me
please please please
don’t go
baby
please don’t go.
thank god for that
black boy from Augusta, GA
who grew up to be a man
running down his yellow wife
beating her bloody with a lead pipe.
yet still, when I hurt
I put that record on—
when I’m in the black hurt
it goes all thru my soul
& I scream:
baby please don’t go.
All other women douse themselves with perfume, put on push-up bras & slide into tight red dresses flashing the hold card of youth & desirability. With no pity on paraplegics, heartbroken sharecroppers or stock market executives, they creep out back doors into different colored arms sending knives thru the hearts of men who owned them. & when you’re young & pretty & you can feel he wants you, you tear his eyes out with blue syphilis from the back door man cause you know you a woman who got to bleed every month & finally turn to sour milk & fat & die alone or too young or someone will put a gun to your head in a moment of justifiable passion that the judge understands (after all how would he feel is his wife fucked the gardener) & your brains mingle with the oil stains on the driveway & your memory is a mantra lesbians & nuns with shaved heads chant at battered women’s shelters.
om nama kali ma
om nama kali ma
wear your love like heaven
but don’t leave the woods
Little Red Riding Hood
& if I was you I’d be careful
of grandma too.
oh blue moon
black guitar fingers
string around
your clitoris
scream like broken glass
coca cola bottles
wipe out your vagina
detonating your eyes
into hills Red Cloud
rode across like fire,
after the infantry
burning the cornfields
of a mother’s love
who slept while
your father smeared
his dick with ice cream
& entreated you
to suck it.
The world sleeps
under orange dioxin rains
eating tuna fish sandwiches
made of dead dolphins.
no one sees the bruises
not even after I swallow
everything in sight—pills, poison.
no one asks me what’s wrong
they tell me I’m crazy
crazy
crazy
Crazy Horse
rising free against the cavalry
Harriet Harriet
Tubman
mumbling
falling out
in the swamp
comin’
comin’
comin’ fo’
to carry me
home,
not my mother
not my sister
not my brother
it’s me
he did it
to me
oh lord
stadin’ in the need of prayer,
where were you
oh lord
when I was bleeding
from the asshole
at three years old.
sometimes I feel
like a motherless child
a long
long
long
way
from home.
if gods run free then why can’t we
which way mister
which way to 42nd Street
not my mother
not my father
it’s me
it’s me
it’s me
it’s me oh lord
standin’ on the cement rock
where Mary stood.
oh Mary
don’t you weep,
try some crack
against the memory
of your mother
sleeping
while your father was
creeping.
oh Martha
don’t you moan,
let me get a snapshot
of you going down
on the dog
& let me tell you
if you don’t be a good little girl
I’ll show it to everybody.
oh baby please
oh baby please
wear your love like heaven
wear your love like heaven
maybe white men won’t be so mean
she thinks as she smears lipstick
on her thick black lips
sliding the comb thru her blonde hair
patting powder on her white cheeks
she things,
black guys are different
not like my father
at least I can feel ‘em
when we fuck,
I couldn’t feel daddy
even though he ate
up my life
& spit it in my face.
20 years
30 years
38 years
38 years
then you remember
you remember in a dream
or in a classroom full of kids
teaching the difference between
a noun & a pronoun,
you remember over a hamburger
at McDonald’s or
someone touches your breast
in a way that seems ancient,
you remember sitting on
the toilet watching your
blood drip red on top of toilet paper & shit,
you remember
reading a poem,
you remember
masturbating.
& your life
is never the same.
Finally
you know.
You know
why you felt
so different
so long,
why you felt
so low
like you shoulda
been flushed
down the toilet
before you were born,
now you know
why you went willingly,
to the back door,
whore house
& white bitch’s kitchen
now you know
why you didn’t feel
like shit,
couldn’t say no,
couldn’t ask for what you needed,
couldn’t get close
couldn’t love anybody
couldn’t get your shit together
couldn’t market yourself
couldn’t believe you could do it
couldn’t read
couldn’t drive
couldn’t stop having babies
or eating
or smoking
or fucking,
now you know
why you are you.
now you know why while dogs ran free
you stayed home,
alone,
looking out the window
of a war zone,
always smiling
or crying
over this man
or that woman.
now you know why
the sky is crying
& maybelline
just couldn’t
by true
& Corina
Corina
never
stops
eating
& Little Eva
is a crack head.
now you know why
with a job on Wall Street,
nice white boy husband
& a house in the country
she tore her
wrists apart
& bled into
the nite
dying
alone
on the
bathroom floor
you had scrubbed
earlier that day.
now you know
now you know
& now that you know,
you can begin
to heal.
-Sapphire, American Dreams
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Three Passions
Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.
— Bertrand Russell
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.
— Bertrand Russell
Those Eyes
Her image in the mirror stared back, perfectly tranquil.
Those eyes
That hair
that nose
those lips
She found it hard to look herself in the eye.
'look up'
She'd want to call to herself, but she didn't know how to say it without being mean, forceful, rude;
She couldn't find the words.
The words
Three words
Scared to say them because they could be empty and if they were empty this world would be terrifying and unbearable.
Yes, unbearable.
That's when you leave.
You go about your day
running errands
Check mail, messages
but always with the emptiness.
Searching--
Keeping poise,
but inside, frantically--
for that something to save you.
That something that was here before,
you remember--or was it?
or was it never at all?
And you think,
how could this be life?
And deep inside somewhere, you know it's wrong. You know it's just not right.
-I will try to limit posting my own work, but yes, this is an original poem!
Those eyes
That hair
that nose
those lips
She found it hard to look herself in the eye.
'look up'
She'd want to call to herself, but she didn't know how to say it without being mean, forceful, rude;
She couldn't find the words.
The words
Three words
Scared to say them because they could be empty and if they were empty this world would be terrifying and unbearable.
Yes, unbearable.
That's when you leave.
You go about your day
running errands
Check mail, messages
but always with the emptiness.
Searching--
Keeping poise,
but inside, frantically--
for that something to save you.
That something that was here before,
you remember--or was it?
or was it never at all?
And you think,
how could this be life?
And deep inside somewhere, you know it's wrong. You know it's just not right.
-I will try to limit posting my own work, but yes, this is an original poem!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
American Dream
There are no words
for some forms
of devastation
though we constantly
try to describe
what America has done
& continues to do to us.
We try to describe it
without whining
or quitting
or eating french fries
or snorting coke.
It's so hard not
to be an addict in America
when you know numerology
& have x-rayed the inside
of Egyptian mummies 5,000 years old
& robbed the graves of Indians
deliberately blinded children
& infected monkeys & rats
with diseases you keep alive
waiting for the right time
so you can sprin 'em
on anyone who might be making progress.
Well, you're miserable now America.
The fact you put a flag
on the moon
doesn't mean you own it.
You can't steal everything
all the time
from everybody.
You can't have the moon, sucker.
A peanut farmer
warned
you could not stay number 1;
number 1 being an illusion
in a circle, which is,
but you still think that
the world is flat
& you can drive out evil
with a pitchfork & pickup truck.
One time when I was a little girl living on an army base
I was in the gymnasium & the general walked in.
& the general is like god or the president, if you believe.
The young woman who was supervising
the group of children I was with said,
"Stand up everybody! The general's here!"
Everybody stood up except me.
The woman looked at me & hissed,
"Stand up for the general!"
I said, "My father's in the army, not me."
& I remained seated.
& throughout 38 years
of bucking & winging
grinning & crawling
brown nosing & begging
there has been a quiet
10 year old in me
who has remained seated.
She perhaps is the real American Dream.
-Sapphire, American Dreams (the author of Push)
for some forms
of devastation
though we constantly
try to describe
what America has done
& continues to do to us.
We try to describe it
without whining
or quitting
or eating french fries
or snorting coke.
It's so hard not
to be an addict in America
when you know numerology
& have x-rayed the inside
of Egyptian mummies 5,000 years old
& robbed the graves of Indians
deliberately blinded children
& infected monkeys & rats
with diseases you keep alive
waiting for the right time
so you can sprin 'em
on anyone who might be making progress.
Well, you're miserable now America.
The fact you put a flag
on the moon
doesn't mean you own it.
You can't steal everything
all the time
from everybody.
You can't have the moon, sucker.
A peanut farmer
warned
you could not stay number 1;
number 1 being an illusion
in a circle, which is,
but you still think that
the world is flat
& you can drive out evil
with a pitchfork & pickup truck.
One time when I was a little girl living on an army base
I was in the gymnasium & the general walked in.
& the general is like god or the president, if you believe.
The young woman who was supervising
the group of children I was with said,
"Stand up everybody! The general's here!"
Everybody stood up except me.
The woman looked at me & hissed,
"Stand up for the general!"
I said, "My father's in the army, not me."
& I remained seated.
& throughout 38 years
of bucking & winging
grinning & crawling
brown nosing & begging
there has been a quiet
10 year old in me
who has remained seated.
She perhaps is the real American Dream.
-Sapphire, American Dreams (the author of Push)
Commonality.
Each of our experiences is unique, but there is a commonality. We have to emphasize the common denominators. We cannot afford to become captives of our own pain. Victimization has to be shared--and transcended--together.
-Hanan Ashrawi
-Hanan Ashrawi
Welcome!
I just wanted to introduce myself and welcome everyone to the blog. My hopes for this project is that it helps promote intelligent, honest, and caring conversations around issues--any issues that affect our lives. I know serious discussion is not for everyone, but if it is for you, I'd be more than happy if you contribute your thoughts!
I really hope this blog can help find common grounds between all people. Ambitious, but worth a try.
I really hope this blog can help find common grounds between all people. Ambitious, but worth a try.
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