Happy Birthday Alice Walker
 

“What a burden to think one is conceived in sin rather than in pleasure; that one is born into evil rather than into
joy. . .
It is chilling to think that the same people who persecuted the wise women and men of Europe, its midwives and healers, then crossed the oceans to Africa and the Americas and tortured and enslaved, raped, impoverished, and eradicated the peaceful, Christ-like people they found. And that the blueprint from which they worked, and still work, was the Bible.”


—-Alice Walker, "The Only Reason You Want to Go to Heaven Is That You Have Been Driven Out of Your Mind," Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism

...Police chiefs in the cities most affected by heroin are responding not by invoking military metaphors, weapons and tactics but by ensuring that police officers save lives and get people into rehab. As one former narcotics officer described his change of heart on addiction, “These are people and they have a purpose in life and we can’t as law enforcement look at them any other way.” In his inability to name the change that allowed this epiphany, his words also capture our cringe-worthy self-denial. Suddenly, police officers understand crime as a sign of underlying addiction requiring coordinated assistance, rather than a scourge to be eradicated.

It is hard to describe the bittersweet sting that many African-Americans feel witnessing this national embrace of addicts. It is heartening to see the eclipse of the generations-long failed war on drugs. But black Americans are also knowingly weary and embittered by the absence of such enlightened thinking when those in our own families were similarly wounded. When the face of addiction had dark skin, this nation’s police did not see sons and daughters, sister and brothers. They saw “brothas,” young thugs to be locked up, rather than “people with a purpose in life.”

—Ekow N Yahkah in this opinion article at the NYTimes.com

"There is no longer distance than the lack of interest"
-Unknown-

I'm working on it....
 

"If you want to be distracted from your life's work, there shortage of opportunities."

- John Acuff, Good Life Project podcast

The task of resisting our own oppression does not relieve us of our responsibility of acknowledging our complicity in the oppression of others. —Beverly Daniel Tatum

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln

While I revel in the death of no one, I cannot abide the hagiographic nonsense that is presently being offered by persons across the spectrum about how recently departed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was “passionate” and brilliant, ad infinitum. There is nothing brilliant about putrescence, nothing insightful and worthwhile about venality posing as insight. To say that there is nothing unconstitutional about executing innocent people (as he did in fact say), or that it’s OK to imprison persons for “gay sex,” among other things, is never the work of a genius no matter the big words and poetic flair with which they might say it. Those opinions are evil, vile and worthy of utter derision. They are not the work of a genius, but a fetid little man whose moral calibration slouched towards those of Torquemada and the Inquisitors. I feel for his family and mourn their personal loss. And that is the extent of my mourning, as it is the only type of which one such as this is deserving.

—Tim Wise

Well Done...
 

Show
 

To...
 

Your journey...
 

<3
 

Walt Whitman's Song of Myself #21
 

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are
with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I
translate into a new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and
still pass on.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

Press close bare-bosom'd night — press close magnetic
nourishing night!
Night of south winds — night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night — mad naked summer night.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow'd earth — rich apple-blossom'd earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.

Prodigal, you have given me love — therefore I to you give
love!
O unspeakable passionate love.

Poema Del Renunciamiento
José Angel Buesa

Pasaras por mi vida sin saber que pasaste.
Pasaras en silencio por mi amor, y al pasar,
fingire una sonrisa, como un dulce contraste
del dolor de quererte ... y jamas lo sabrás.

Soñare con el nacar virginal de tu frente;
soñare con tus ojos de esmeraldas de mar;
soñare con tus labios desesperadamente;
soñare con tus besos ... y jamás lo sabrás.
Quizas pases con otro que te diga al oido
esas frases que nadie como yo te dirá;
y, ahogando para siempre mi amor inadvertido,
te amare más que nunca ... y jamás lo sabrás.

Yo te amare en silencio, como algo inaccesible,
como un sueño que nunca lograré realizar;
y el lejano perfume de mi amor imposible
rozará tus cabellos ... y jamás lo sabrás.

Y si un día una lágrima denuncia mi tormento,
-- el tormento infinito que te debo ocultar --
te diré sonriente: "No es nada ... ha sido el viento".
Me enjugaré la lágrima ... ¡y jamás lo sabrás!

Note: The words for this poem are in the above/previous post.

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

We must travel in the direction of our fear. ― John Berryman