"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.