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Archive for the 'What does it mean?' Category

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For spiritual advice, call this number….

Friday, June 29th, 2007

Tonight at 10 p.m. I got a call from a student. I love this kid. He first showed up in one of my freshman comp classes three or four years ago. He failed that class because he quit attending class and didn’t hand in his last few essays. I think he was in jail toward the end of the semester, but I guess he knew I really liked his quirky rogue intelligence and creativity. He showed up again. And again. I think he has taken four or five classes from me now, and he was planning to take yet another one this fall, but tonight, he called and launched what I hope will be a whole new life for himself. Our conversation was delicious. [read on]

Posted in What does it mean? | 1 Comment »

Why we don’t do it.

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

Met my friend Jake at a coffee house this afternoon, and we found ourselves laughing at all the excuses we make for why we don’t do what we say we most want to do. In his case, paint. In my case, write. We need more uninterrupted time. We need to clean house first. We need a larger space. A smaller space. Unpaid bills worry us. Our kids need something from us. Want to write in the blog first. Our excuses are endless and hilarious, really. Driving home, I heard something on NPR that caught my interest, so I went to their website and ended up stumbling over a feature that includes a marvelous poem that says it brilliantly and made me laugh. Szymborska is talking about people who put off having a child. But it’s about putting off anything we think (or say) we want to do; running our “rackets” as the Forum people say. [read on]

Posted in What does it mean? | 1 Comment »

Energy, Zulu traditional doctors, Kirby vacuums

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

Today is my second full day of not-teaching (till mid-August), and I feel as though I’m on intravenous Life Force. I went for a walk this morning, and I could feel energy surging through me like electric voltage. I think it’s related to a concept I learned from Zulu traditional doctors, about which I’ll say more beneath the line. Meanwhile, as I was finishing off my course, Manko and Kendra started training for a new job. At first they thought they were training to be telephone consumer service reps, and later they realized they were training to be Kirby vacuum cleaner salespeople. [read on]

Posted in About Africa, Manko, Texas, What does it mean? | 7 Comments »

Silence, Listening, Censorship, Media

Friday, April 27th, 2007

Twice this morning I have written a new blog posting about two things: the workshop at the prison last night, and Amy Goodman’s speech at the Oscar Romero Awards this past Sunday, which I heard rebroadcast on the radio as I was driving home from the prison. Twice, as I neared the end of my post, I accidentally hit a wrong key that navigated me away from my post and erased everything I’d just written. When that happens twice, I have to take stock. What do I NEED to say? Can I be more succinct? The clock is ticking. [read on]

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Politics, Prisons and Prisoners, What does it mean? | 2 Comments »

Nikki Giovanni gets it right

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

(Update Wednesday April 18th: today her speech is on the internet. I see now that much of my enthusiasm had to do with her delivery, her energy during her performance of the speech. But I will leave the rest of this post as it was when I wrote it. I seem to have added quite a bit of my own to what she said, but I still think her intentions were what I heard.)

After classes today I had to get the oil changed in my car, so I was forced to sit down in a waiting room with a television on, just as Nikki Giovanni made the concluding talk at the Virginia Tech Convocation, and although part of her speech was a little too much hooting “school spirit” for my taste, she said what I haven’t heard anyone else say and what is, in my opinion, the best possible thing anyone could say. I will just use this space today to celebrate her wisdom and courage in saying what she said. [read on]

Posted in What does it mean? | 5 Comments »

Mary Rose Meets Thay

Monday, April 16th, 2007

Continuing my reading of Mary Rose O’Reilley’s The Barn at the End of the World, it seems to me that the radiant core of the book is this meeting she had with “Thay,” Thich Nhat Hanh, the head teacher at Plum Village, and the author of several books that have shaped me, including Being Peace . [read on]

Posted in Books and Movies, Buddhism, What does it mean?, Where to plant myself | 1 Comment »

Doubting Everything

Monday, April 9th, 2007

The woman who has taken Basho says he’s not eating, he growls at her cat, he’s terrified of her dog. If she sits on the couch in the room where he hides, he will come out and sit near her; but he doesn’t trust her, runs if she moves toward him. Perhaps he just needs time to adjust, but I feel horrible for thrusting this difficulty on a being who only ever gave me joy and who was perfectly happy with life as it was. And I miss him. There are horrors taking place in the world, and by comparison with the results of global warming and what’s going on in Darfur, Myanmar, or Iraq, this is trivial. But every loss calls up every other loss. I live again the losses of my children, friends, lovers, animals, oceans, and places I have left behind in the quest. I take this moment, and Dave’s wise comment, to call into question everything in my life. [read on]

Posted in Manko, What does it mean?, Where to plant myself | 1 Comment »

Silence

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

This came in a comment to an earlier post, but it’s so beautiful I decided to make it a post of its own, with gratitude to Christopher for sending it:

Silence. Advice / thoughts from Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958): [read on]

Posted in What does it mean? | 1 Comment »

The Nerve to Become an Old Woman

Sunday, March 25th, 2007

A friend sent me Carolyn Heilbrun’s 1986 classic, Writing a Woman’s Life. I read it when it was new, listened to Heilbrun talk about it at Smith. In reading it again now, I see that I owe Heilbrun and her cronies enormous gratitude. She/they shaped my habits of mind more than I credited, till now. Her analysis of literature and culture is as comfortable to me as old slippers. But that’s the point of my gratitude. I made her ideas part of my way of looking at the world, part of the way I have given voice to other women and created my living autobiography. [read on]

Posted in Books and Movies, What does it mean? | 1 Comment »

Continuing with Karen Armstrong

Saturday, March 24th, 2007

I’m still reading Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase. It’s taking me a long time. I read a few pages, put the book down, think, live, sleep on her words, wake, and read a few pages more. Armstrong is part of this moment for me, and I am as grateful to her as I am to my closest friends. She explores questions, like What is an authentic life? which have called to me for decades. She describes my own doubts and longings. Sometimes she sounds a little like Joseph Campbell, as here: [read on]

Posted in Books and Movies, What does it mean? | 2 Comments »

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