Recommendations

I have been thinking about writing a recommendation for a book I just loved ... and now I have another two things to recommend.

It's been a long time since I felt the strength to do a NRU... honestly, I am still not there. But I read this piece and fell in love. *wink*

We all need a little more inspiration to 1) be ourselves and 2) open to possibilities despite setbacks.

***please note it has been so long since I started this post that I honestly cannot remember the other thing besides the book I was going to recommend.***

The book ... a while back, because I have been moving the publish date on this post for MONTHS, I listened to Hunger by Roxane Gay. I have been listening to books more than reading, but I still call it reading. I hope that is okay.

So, Roxane Gay and her memoir Hunger - wow, WOW, I listened to the author read her memoir. I heard the life in the words. It was amazing.

My takeaway was that every WOMAN should listen to this book. Not read. Listen. There are dark spots, a lot of them, that you need to push through to get to the honey. Because it is sweet when you get past the darkness, when you are deep inside the heart of Roxane Gay, it is all sweetness and reality. And those two things do not always go together as perfectly as they did in this book.

You should listen to it.

You will learn to love your body and hear the story it is telling you every day, at least a little bit you will learn this, by listening to this book. You will, at least, learn that loving your body and listening to its stories is life changing.

Or maybe you won't ... as some reviewers have noted, and Gay herself has as well, this is not a book about transformation. It is not a victory lap. It is not this is how you do it.

But, for me, it was a how to and why to love your body, just as it is, and to listen to your body because it is engaging you in the dialogue every day, even when our too busy minds and emotions are yelling loudly over our bodies attempts at conversation.

You should listen to it.

Read/listen to this book, if you are a woman, or a man, or whatever, and you have not yet committed to loving your body and listening to its stories.

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This is not the other thing that I was meaning to recommend when I started this post, but I have come upon this realization in the past two weeks: I am not only more productive when I listen to books while I work, I am more peaceful. My emotions to do not get the better of me when I am listening to a book and someone asks me for the work item I delivered three weeks ago, or tries to dump their work in my lap because I am a good worker, or tries to organize my work life to make their lives easier. I just smile and listen to my book and do my work.

My blood pressure appreciates listening to a good book. Maybe your blood pressure loves listening to a book, too.

Poetry Thursday

I felt like I was here ... and it reminded me of those walks on the beach with the bees and ladybugs washed up on the sand.

Funeral: For Us His Gold
~Alessandra Lynch
                    after Gerald Stern

The insect was yellow with crumpled-black banded legs
          and shellacked back that would outlast us
          and wistful eyes from what I could discern on that trail between
               fields,
and we laid him out in the open air under a sky fast-blue with change,
               wedging
          a leaf beneath his triple-belted belly so he didn’t rest on plain dirt,
          and we placed two cloverblooms by his head and he was old
you said, could tell by how definite the stripes were, how complete
          the patterns bold and dark, almost engraved,
and he was beautiful in that pasture of thirty-three cows and we drank
          milk in the blaring heat and ate the cake you’d made. We were
          the only humans there—unholy-seeming things with two legs,
               dismal histories—
drinking and eating around his elegant husk,
          and from the furze, fellow insects rose, a frenzied static around
               our bodies,
while he remained in situ an unremitting yellow, the color more
          vivid, louder now that he was a remnant. Was color the purpose
               here?
Yellow had alerted us to him, and we took care
          with leaf and clover to make his bed.
The insect’s gold our togetherness, its death from which we fed.

Poetry Thursday, fall

October-November
~Hart Crane

Indian-summer-sun
With crimson feathers whips away the mists,—
Dives through the filter of trellises
And gilds the silver on the blotched arbor-seats.
Now gold and purple scintillate
On trees that seem dancing
In delirium;
Then the moon
In a mad orange flare
Floods the grape-hung night

end of an era

I have been holding on to some news. I am not sure if it is because I was in a bit of denial or because I was worried that if I said something, it might not work out.

I got a job.

It's in New Jersey.

So I have been packing up my life.

And, as my car decided to keep to the timeline I imagined, even though I stepped away from the PhD program.

That is to say, in January it started falling apart, slowly, and painfully (for me).

There was no way to take the car with me. I couldn't even get it south so I could give it to my father's friend. Though I think I have successfully convinced my dad that it wasn't a good idea to give it to the friend who couldn't possibly have the money to sink into making it really drive-able again.

So, I had to make a decision of what to do with the car, the little green machine that has been my constant companion for the past 16 years.

It drove me cross country, away from my ex-husband, into my new life in Oakland.  It drove me to the next new life in New Mexico.

It served as my phone booth on those long drives between Oakland and Oxnard ... and sometimes, when I couldn't bring myself to talk to others, as the safe space where I could sing or cry or both.

It was faithful and dependable and constant.

I agonized about the decision, truth be told, though I might not have shown it. In the end, I decided to donate it to KQED in lieu of all the donations I have not been able to make in the past few years. Even as I was sure it was the right thing, it was so painful to let go.  I drove it down to the big avenue below my house so that the flatbed truck could more easily hook it up.

As I walked back up the hill to my apartment... to that messier before completely packed state, downcast and tears in my eyes, I spotted a car just like mine parked just where mine had been not twenty minutes earlier.

I am not sure what it means except that I thought, oh, you came back... may my little green car be happy either in someone else's home or as the parts that make other little green cars go...

St Patrick's Day...

On St. Patrick's Day, I remember my grandmother, pictured above with my older brother, because it was her birthday.

When I knew her, she would spend her birthday with us and then leave for Mexico to visit her sisters and brother.  She would stay there for six months and be back for the holidays. 

Not quite a snow bird, but something in that vein.

She died when I was only 5, so my memories of her are cloaked in the fog of a small child's mind.

She stayed with me a fair amount when she was in the US.  It is said we could not talk to each other as she didn't speak English and I didn't speak Spanish.  Actually, she chose not to speak English and I was still in the language acquisition phase, so there is no way to know what was going on in my brain.

But, when I started to speak Spanish, all those language acquisition memories were triggered.  Now, I believe that we probably communicated just fine.  She spoke, I understood and answered in whatever language seemed appropriate. 

Besides that early imprint of language skills, I inherited from her the finger.  It comes out unbidden whenever I need to slow someone's roll.  Not the middle finger, that would be vulgar.  The pointer finger that windshield wipes slowly or quickly depending on the need.

There may be other traits I inherited, I am just not aware.

What I know for sure is that the bond we had was real and ours alone.  After she was gone in the physical form, she would sometimes visit me.  I would wake in the middle of the night and see her seated at the foot of my bed, just watching.  Though we had a short amount of time, I carry our relationship with me wherever I go.

Happy birthday, grandma... hope you are celebrating with family in heaven.

Poetry Thursday, Thanksgiving Edition

Gratitude -- is not the mention 

Of a Tenderness, 

But its still appreciation 

Out of Plumb of Speech.

When the Sea return no Answer 

By the Line and Lead

Proves it there's no Sea, or rather 

A remoter Bed?


~Emily Dickinson

Poetry Thursday

Live life 
as if 
everything 
is rigged 
in your favor.
~ Rumi

Chicago - arrival day

 First glimpses of Chicago from the train ...

 curious part, you go quite a ways into Chicago, and then you back into the station ...

 First thing I snapped a photo of at Union Station, Chicago:

 I found it to hard to resist.

 Not a lot of time to snap photos in the train station, but this is from the Grand Hall as I made my way to the street and my ride...

 I did only a tiny bit of sightseeing in downtown Chicago at the urging of my new friend.  I mostly spent time in the Art Institute's gift shop ... AMAZING things in there.

 I walked around Millennium Park and got some cool shots of the really odd structures and public art.

-

And of course, I had a ton of fun taking photos of the bean.  And I found out that its name is not The Bean but something about a cloud?

The park and the view from the park was pretty spectacular as well.

 I didn't want to intrude, so I waited til they finished but I enjoyed watching this woman pose for her husband in front of the fountain.

I am always so happy to see such a large space left "open" or relatively "open" for the use of the people. 

 I stood in this spot and watched a train go through and realized I should have taken a photo, so I waited for the next one to come through

 Finally, before I set off in search of a place to rest and COLOR, I took some pictures of the library, again right across from the park.  And some other really gorgeous buildings with beautiful texture and details: