"The Change"

To truly cherish the things that are important to you, 

you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose.

—Marie Kondo, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

So this is how you change a life

A little more than half way through.

I must be grateful not for my socks

But to my socks. They work so hard

At carrying me.

And really don’t we all deserve

To be rolled, then gently stood up straight?

From when I was a girl in pilly polyester tights

Choking on my turtleneck

I reached just like they tell you to do

For the stars within reason. But now

I’m half of the time on my knees

Collecting Lego, each one a snowflake.

Not like the Lego of my youth that was all bricks

Three colors like the French flag.

Like the movies I saw Rouge Blanc and Bleu

That called me: Make a movie like this where

the light moves across the frame

across the frame and across the face of a beautiful woman

and that is enough! I wanted to.

Half the time on my knees.

Oh, Karl Ove Knausgaard! Come sit by me and tell me how

You can change a diaper but my representation

Counciled me, cautioned me,

Never say family. Family means missing

Deadlines and unavailable for shooting.

You didn’t have to tell me that: I knew. Till I turned forty

And spread my legs for a syringe and a quiet bald man.

He knocked me up in under a minute

After all those years of hoping no one would.

In under a minute

I returned to the arms of the man I love. All hair.

Emerging from the cupboard with the Barely Legal magazines

He swore he didn’t touch.

Twice we did this.

Twice.

For the king’s family.

Take them from me, don’t take them.

I would die without them.

Declutter my soul! Marie Kondo, I implore you!

I am unavailable for shooting!

I am too full of lyrics and resentment

I am too full of slogans and bad habits

Too full of small exclusions

Too full of wild assumptions

Of scrambled eggs and Power Rangers

Too, too full of parking tickets.

Are these hot flashes sparks of joy?

Move the fan to where it blows on me Marie

And oh Marie

These socks have carried us down the street

Down to the freeway and the front door’s standing open.

Joanna Klink, "New Year"

We woke to the darkness before our eyes,

unable to take the measure of the loss.

Who are they. What are we. What have we

   abandoned to arrive with such violence at this hour.

In answer we drew back, covered our ears

with our hands to the heedless victory, or vowed,

   as I did, into the changed air, never to consent.

Annie Dillard

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

Uruguayan psychoanalyst Marcelo Vinar, quoted by Nancy Caro Hollander in Uprooted Minds: Surviving the Politics of Terror in the Americas

The process of political change and the capacity to subjectively absorb and understand this change operate at distinctly different rates. . . . It's as if I continued to believe in democracy when I was living in a country that was already totalitarian. I believe that it is characteristic of the period of transition between democracy and dictatorship that people function by denying reality.

Elizabeth Bishop, "The Art of Losing"

The art of losing isn't hard to master; 

so many things seem filled with the intent 

to be lost that their loss is no disaster. 

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. 

The art of losing isn't hard to master. 

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: 

places, and names, and where it was you meant 

to travel. None of these will bring disaster. 

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or 

next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 

The art of losing isn't hard to master. 

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. 

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture 

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident 

the art of losing's not too hard to master 

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Wendell Barry

When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Toni Morrison

Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.

Psalm 10, translated by Daniel Berrigan, 1921-2016

Lord, why stand on the sidelines
Silent as the mouth of the dead, the maw of the grave
O living One, why?
…
Lord, they call you blind man. Call their bluff.

Jim Harrison

There are no old myths, only new people.

Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Election, Lao Tzu, a Cup of Water"

Studying peace means in the first place unlearning the vocabulary of war, and that's very difficult indeed. Isn't it right to fight against injustice? Isn't that what Selma and Standing Rock are — brave battles for justice?

I think not. Brave yes; battles no. Refusing to engage an aggressor on his terms, standing ground, holding firm, is not aggression — though the aggressive opponent will always declare that it is. Refusing to meet violence with violence is a powerful, positive act.

But that is paradoxical. It's hard to see how not doing something can be more positive than doing something. When all the words we have to use are negative — inaction, nonviolence, refusal, resistance, evasion — it's hard to see and keep in mind that the outcome of these so-called negatives is positive, while the outcome of the apparently positive act of making war is negative.

We confuse self-defense, the reaction to aggression, with aggression itself. Self-defense is a necessary and morally defensible reaction.

But defending a cause without fighting, without attacking, without aggression, is not a reaction. It is an action. It is an expression of power. It takes control.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Protest"

To sin by silence when we should protest 
makes cowards out of men. The human race 
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised 
Against injustice, ignorance and lust, 
The inquisition yet would serve the law. 
And guillotines decide our least disputes. 
The few who dare must speak and speak again, 
To right the wrongs of many.

Wislawa Szymborska: The Turn of the Century

It was supposed to be better than the others, our 20th century, 
But it won't have time to prove it. 
Its years are numbered, 
its step unsteady, 
its breath short. 

Already too much has happened 
that was not supposed to happen. 
What was to come about 
has not. 

Spring was to be on its way, 
and happiness, among other things. 

Fear was to leave the mountains and valleys. 
The truth was supposed to finish before the lie. 

Certain misfortunes 
were never to happen again 
such as war and hunger and so forth. 

These were to be respected: 
the defenselessness of the defenseless, 
trust and the like. 

Whoever wanted to enjoy the world 
faces an impossible task. 

Stupidity is not funny. 
Wisdom isn't jolly. 

Hope 
Is no longer the same young girl 
et cetera. Alas. 

God was at last to believe in man: 
good and strong, 
but good and strong 
are still two different people. 

How to live -- someone asked me this in a letter, 
someone I had wanted 
to ask that very thing. 

Again and as always, 
and as seen above 
there are no questions more urgent 
than the naive ones. 
 

Trevor Noah

When I was learning how to box, that was the number one thing my trainer taught me. He said, 'You can't get angry at every single time I hit you because that's why you're here. You're going to get hit. Acknowledge that you're going to get hit and now focus on how you're going to fight properly.' And living through the times is exactly the right way to put it because I have seen a slice of this only on a different continent

Jennifer Pahlka, founder Code for America

It's supposed to be hard. We are in this together. It is up to us.

Theodore Roosevelt

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

W.H. Auden - In Memory of W. B. Yeats

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902

Our movement is belated, and like all things too long postponed, now gets on everybody's nerves. 

Dorothy Parker, "Sanctuary"

My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Tyler Brewington, Calling the Water

once I stepped barefoot into something flyblown

it was a great lesson in inattention

Richard Brautigan, Watermelon Sugar

Megan Smith, United States CTO

Go where you are rare.

George Eliot

"You must love your work and not be always looking over the edge of it...You must not be ashamed of your work and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else."

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract. O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.

Ellen Bass, "Enough"

          Enough seen….Enough had....Enough…
                                       —Arthur Rimbaud

No. It will never be enough. Never
enough wind clamoring in the trees,
sun and shadow handling each leaf, never enough clang
of my neighbor hammering,
the iron nails, relenting wood, sound waves
lapping over roofs, never enough
bees purposeful at the throats
of lilies. How could we be replete
with the flesh of ripe tomatoes, the unique
scent of their crushed leaves. It would take many
births to be done with the thatness of that.

Oh blame life. That we just want more.
Summer rain. Mud. A cup of tea.
Our teeth, our eyes. A baby in a stroller.
Another spoonful of crème brûlée, sweet burnt crust crackling.
And hot showers, oh lovely, lovely hot showers.

Today was a good day.
My mother-in-law sat on the porch, eating crackers and cheese
with a watered-down margarita
and though her nails are no longer stop-light red
and she can’t remember who’s alive and dead,
still, this was a day
with no weeping, no unstoppable weeping.

Last night, through the small window of my laptop,
I watched a dying man kill himself in Switzerland.
He wore a blue shirt and snow was falling
onto a small blue house, onto dark needles of pine and fir.
He didn’t step outside to feel the snow on his face.
He sat at a table with his wife and drank poison.

Online I found a plastic bag complete with Velcro
and a hole for a tube to a propane tank. I wouldn’t have to
move our Weber. I could just slide
down the stucco to the flagstones, where the healthy
weeds are sprouting through the cracks.
Maybe it wouldn’t be half-bad
to go out looking at the yellowing leaves of the old camellia.
And from there I could see the chickens scratching—
if we still have chickens then. And yet…

this little hat of life, how will I bear
to take it off while I can still reach up? Snug woolen watch cap,
lacy bonnet, yellow cloche with the yellow veil
I wore the Easter I turned thirteen when my mother let me promenade
with Tommy Spagnola on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.

Oxygen, oxygen, the cry of the body—and you always want to give it
what it wants. But I must say no—
enough, enough
with more tenderness
than I have ever given to a lover, the gift
of the nipple hardening under my fingertip, more
tenderness than to my newborn,
when I held her still flecked
with my blood. I’ll say the most gentle refusal
to this dear dumb animal and tighten
the clasp around my throat that once was kissed and kissed
until the blood couldn’t rest in its channel, but rose
to the surface like a fish that couldn’t wait to be caught.

C. D. Wright, Op Ed

I believe in a hardheaded art, an unremitting, unrepentant practice of one’s own faith in the word in one’s own obstinate terms. I believe the word was made good from the start; it remains so to this second. I believe words are golden as goodness is golden. Even the humble word brush gives off a scratch of light. There is not much poetry from which I feel barred, whether it is arcane or open in the extreme. I attempt to run the gamut because I am pulled by the extremes. I believe the word used wrongly distorts the world. I hold to hard distinctions of right and wrong.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/postscript-c-d-wright-1949-2016

Collette sez

Who said you should be happy? Do your work.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, letter from Paris to a potential benefactor c. 1927

I want to work. This is no vain ideal that I am favoring myself with, no distraction through which I seek to make life more agreeable and time pass more quickly, but a fire that burns in me, a force which compels my obedience and I am only obeying a command which is stronger than myself, even in the face of what may seem discouraging conditions. I cannot stop, I must go on.

Someday people will realize that this is my medium of expression, that it is still possible to say something through sculpture, that a sculptor may yet live again.

I do not complain of difficulties. I am not afraid to face them, the contraire...

I must continue to work. People like my things and if they like them shall I not someday be able to take care of myself? I want to. I expect that of myself, shall respect myself more when I can, but at this moment I seem not to be able to, and I am sad, almost ashamed to ask. ...What more can I say? I want to work, I want to work. I must work. I live for that alone.

Forgive me I beg you for writing like this, for I[']m driven to desperation.

Miller Williams, The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina

Somewhere in everyone's head something points toward home,
a dashboard's floating compass, turning all the time
to keep from turning. It doesn't matter how we come
to be wherever we are, someplace where nothing goes
the way it went once, where nothing holds fast
to where it belongs, or what you've risen or fallen to.

What the bubble always points to,
whether we notice it or not, is home.
It may be true that if you move fast
everything fades away, that given time
and noise enough, every memory goes
into the blackness, and if new ones come-

small, mole-like memories that come
to live in the furry dark-they, too,
curl up and die. But Carol goes
to high school now. John works at home
what days he can to spend some time
with Sue and the kids. He drives too fast.

Ellen won't eat her breakfast.
Your sister was going to come
but didn't have the time.
Some mornings at one or two
or three I want you home
a lot, but then it goes.

It all goes.
Hold on fast
to thoughts of home
when they come.
They're going to
less with time.

Time
goes
too
fast.
Come
home.

Forgive me that. One time it wasn't fast.
A myth goes that when the years come
then you will, too. Me, I'll still be home.

Hemingway, letter to Janet Flanner 1933

The only way, I suppose, is to find out what women are going to write memoirs, and try to get them with child.

Robert Herrick, "Delight in Disorder"

A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness; A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly; A winning wave (deserving note) In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility; Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part.

Albert Einstein

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. 

Sean Morley Dixon, "In the Movies"

Till a man comes along from... builds a marquis up above, um... sets up a booth, sells tickets to our youth... 'Cause we're young, and we're young. But for me, though, it's much different from that No matter what I do, I will always be old...

Colette

Who said you should be happy? Do your work.