Brooklyn Brightwood Batahola: January 2007

"There is a room beyond right or wrong. I go to it."--My Dad

I went to Ikea for the first time yesterday, and wandered in awe through their maze of pre-fabricated rooms like museum exhibits of some version of the American dream, the dream where you can have matching furniture and shelves full of books in Swedish. I got a shadowbox frame that I'm really excited to play with, and also these spice jars. Four for $2.99. And a down comforter! For cheap. Slave labor, Dad asked? Probably, I said. What would Rumi say about Ikea, Dad asked? And then he wrote a poem.

مولانا جلال الدین محمد رو

Yesterday was my dad's 61st birthday, and to celebrate it he put copies of poems by the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi in his coworkers' mailboxes. Also some sonnets, he said. Well here is a poem for you:

Not Here

There's courage involved if you want
to become truth. There is a broken-

open place in a lover. Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp

compassion in this group? What's the
use of old and frozen thought? I want

a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.

We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change. Lukewarm

won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here.

If you want what visible reality
can give, you're an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you're not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.

Only one more Bush State of the Union to go, guys.

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master." --Abraham Lincoln

Here are a couple of speeches to keep you warm tonight...

Barbara Jordan's famous keynote address to the 1976 Democratic National Convention...

And, because we cannot all be members of Congress, let alone be Rep. Jordan, here's a speech for Equality Now from humble television producer Joss Whedon.

"A woman, neither old, nor young..." -my mom

I walk at sunset, east along the road. There are no houses in that direction, except the abandoned one where the wild plums grow, white with bloom in springtime. Folks call the road lonely, because there is no human traffic and human stirring. Because I have walked it so many times, and seen such a tumult of life there, it seems to me one of the most populous highways of my acquaintance. I have walked it in ecstasy, and in joy it is beloved. Every pine, every gall berry bush, every passion vine, every joree rustling in the underbrush, is vibrant. I have walked it in trouble, and the wind in the trees beside me is easing. I have walked it in despair, and the red of the sunset is my own blood dissolving into the night’s darkness. For all such things were on earth before us, and will survive after us, and it is given to us to join ourselves with them and to be comforted.
-Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Do you ever reread something and find in it the long-forgotten origins of some aspect of yourself? If I am wondering why I have to do something, like get up in the morning or love people, the line that goes through my head is: that is what is given to us to do. I like the construction of the sentence because the giver is not specified. The nature or existence of a giver is not predetermined, and in fact may only exist in the sense that we find ourselves with some things given. I’ve always kind of thought I stole the line from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where.

The first night I was at Linda and Topper’s new house in Port Clyde, I found that passage from Cross Creek. I knew Linda liked it so I had printed it out and illustrated it with pencil drawings for a Christmas present when I was 14; Linda has it hanging on the wall. And there it is—those words that I have been speaking to myself ever since.

I loooove alligators. Meghan and Lindsay met this one in Florida just a few weeks ago. Did you know alligators hiss if you throw things at them? Totally true.