worth watching

“This [genocide] is how we came to own these United States. This is the legacy of manifest destiny. Prisoners are still born into prisoner of war camps, long after the guards are gone.” 
-Aaron Huey

the winter steals my songs away / in all of this i come undone

V2.

I've been a child I've been a slave
I've grown bitter and learned to pray
Packed my bags and started back
The cost was just too high to pay 

Em                         G/F#       C9          G
When you walk through the water I will be with you
Em                         G/F#        G                C9    
When you pass through the river the waves will not overtake you
Em                            G/F#       C9               G
When you walk on the fire the flames they will not touch you
Em                   G/F#                 C9 
You are mine, you are mine, you are mine

I've paid admission to the places I have loved by pawning off pieces of my heart 
til I'm smeared across a globe with little hope of recovering half my parts. 
I've spent entire years behind a wheel wondering why it is I drive so hard. 
til I'm no closer to an answer, ten years later, than the day I tried to start.

I've left // When I thought leaving made things right. 
I've quit // When quitting meant I didn't start a fight. 
I've spent // Half my wrist erasing what I write 
half my days ashamed of half my nights 
half my life escaping from my life 

Sometimes I'm certain I'm a train filled with strangers 
And we're all searching for a home we've never seen 
So I'll keep whistling my song low and pretty 
And we'll keep stumbling through the night 
like tunnels searching for the light. 

unfold your own myth / rumi

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings
up a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to another world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and ther’s a cold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he’s wealthy.

But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking…Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you’ve grown
lifting.

''I sit on the bench under the wild cherry tree in the cemetery and sort through my memories, but the harder I try to remember, the more I get confused about which are memories and which are stories. When I was little, my mother used to tell me family stories--but only the ones that had a happy ending. My sister also told me stories: her stories were strongly formulaic, with goodies (Mother, Cossacks) and baddies (Father, communists). Vera's stories always had a beginning, a middle, an end, and a moral. Sometimes my father told me stories, too, but his stories were complicated in structure, ambiguous in meaning and unsatisfactory in outcome, with lengthy digressions and packed with obscure facts. I preferred my mother's and my sister's tales.

I remember a time when my sister and I loved each other, and my father and I loved each other. Maybe there was even a time when my father and my sister loved each other--that I can't remember. We all loved Mother, and she loved all of us.

My sister is ten years older than me, and had one foot in the adult world. She knew things I didn't know, things that were whispered but never spoken about. She knew grown-up secrets so terrible that just the knowledge of them had scarred her heart.

Now that Mother has died, Big Sis has become the guardian of the family archive, the spinner of stories, the custodian of the narrative that defines who we are. This role, above all others, is the one I envy and resent. It is time, I think, to find out the whole story, and to tell it in my own way.''

-A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka

still most loved after all these years

O! Holy night! The stars, their gleams prolonging,
Watch o'er the eve of our dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error, longing
For His appearance, then the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn...

He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger,
Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!
Behold your King, Before Him lowly bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.


Read the literal translation from the French here.

One Thousand Gifts / Ann Voskamp

''Daily discipline is the door to full freedom, and the discipline to count to one thousand gave way to the freedom of wonder and I can't imagine not staying awake to God in the moment, the joy in the now. But awakening to joy awakens to pain.

Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living. Pages of the gratitude journal fill endlessly. Yet I know it in the vein and the visceral: life is loss. Every day, the gnawing...

What will I lose? Health? Comfort? Hope? Eventually, I am guaranteed to lose every earthly thing I have ever possessed.

When will I lose? Today? In a few weeks? How much time have I got before the next loss?

Who will I lose? And that's definite. I will lose every single person I have ever loved. Either abruptly or eventually. All human relationships end in loss. Am I prepared for that?

Every step I take forward in my life is a loss of something in my life and I live the waiting: How and of what will I be emptied today?''

currently reading

''Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that 'Whatever is is right,' an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.''
-A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens

well, it's 7.13. [farther along / josh garrels]

Farther along we'll know all about it
farther along we'll understand why
so cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine
we'll understand this, all by and by

Tempted and tried, I wondered why
the good man died, the bad man thrives
and Jesus cries because he loves them both
we're all castaways in need of rope
hanging on by the last threads of our hope
in a house of mirrors full of smoke
confusing illusions I've seen

Where did I go wrong? I sang along
to every chorus of the song that the devil wrote
like a piper at the gates
leading mice and men down to their fates
but some will courageously escape
the seductive voice with a heart of faith
while walking the line back home

So much more to life than we've been told
it's full of beauty that will unfold,
so shine like you struck gold my wayward son
that deadweight burden weighs a ton
go down to the river and let it run
wash away all the things you've done
forgiveness, alright.

Still I get hard-pressed on every side
between the rock and the compromise
like the truth and a pack of lies fighting for my soul
and I've got no place left to go
'cause I got changed by what I've been shown
more glory than this world has known
keeps me rambling on.

And even when I fall I'll get back up
for the joy that overflows my cup
heaven filled me with more than enough
knocked down my levies and my bluffs,
let the flood wash me.

Farther along we'll know all about it
farther along we'll understand why
so cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine
we'll understand this, all by and by.

sing all you want

It's empty in the valley of your heart
The sun, it rises slowly as you walk
Away from all the fears
And all the faults you've left behind

I have seen the same
I know the shame in your defeat
Now let me at the truth
Which will refresh my broken mind

So tie me to a post and block my ears
I can see widows and orphans through my tears
I know my call despite my faults
And despite my growing fears

So come out of your cave walking on your hands
And see the world hanging upside down
You can understand dependence
When you know the Maker's hand

Cause I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it's meant to be

And I will hold on hope
And I won't let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again

´´We are the trees whom shaking fastens more.´´
-George Herbert

for those who know they thirst

You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.

So many are alive who don’t seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces
of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.

You are not dead yet, it’s not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.

Recognizing Women, Part II

A woman who reminds of writer and former Westmont prof Marilyn Chandler McEntyre (who deserves an entry to herself) is Kettle Falls´ own Lynn Schott. Also a poet and teacher, I got to write an article about this lady last summer when she retired from teaching high school English. That was in the town eight miles from mine, so I never got to have her, but her reputation as a teacher in a forest-industry town is highly upheld. Born and raised in San Francisco, and having spent several years of her 20s in Guatemala, Lynn´s choice to teach at a struggling high school in a poor, rural area greatly blessed hundreds of students. For me, meeting Lynn brought with it increased respect for all good teachers (especially those lovers of language and story) and a seed-idea that maybe at some point I want to try my hand at teaching high school or community college English. The woman holds to high standards, asks questions that push into the comfortable and accepted, and demonstrates kindness to even the most difficult students. She doesn´t have email or a computer, so she won´t be reading this, but if you could meet her, she´d make you coffee and you´d sit in her garden or by her fireplace and have a long, rich conversation.

over the rhine / the laugh of recognition

There is something to be said for tenacity
I'll hold on to you
If you hold on to me.

over the rhine / what i'll remember most

The saddest songs are the happiest
The hardest truths are the easiest
Put us both to the test
And tell me if you still need me
And I will swallow these words
And see if I can still believe

The biggest lies are the little ones
When the look in your eyes is the distant one
Angel or demon
You know that they can share one bed
I've laid awake so long
I've got them both inside my head

This is what I'll remember most about dying
So many moments like ghosts
Slipping through my hands in vain
You were 80% angel, 10% demon
The rest was hard to explain

This American dream may be poisonous
Violence is contagious
Crowded or empty
I walk these city streets alone
Whoever brought me here
Is gonna have to take me home

This is what I'll remember most about dying
Loading these moments like a gun
Hoping to kill the pain
[I] was 80% angel, 10% demon
The rest was hard to explain

East Coker in autumn

The hollyhock is holding on, though we're reaching mid-November
the laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
I've been meaning to plant those poppies,
but only seem to be losing any tolerance for cold I might have had.

(All the best, I suppose, with the impending migration south.)

We pick up the pieces of these things, she reminds me
heartbreak, she means, and living through fire
not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
of death and birth
(we've been picking them up all our lives)

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
which shall be the darkness of G-d

Now looking you in the hazel eye
and we know that the hills and trees... are all being rolled away
the question is not one of protection,
but humility
the only wisdom we can hope to acquire
an unending exercise in trust.

bright eyes / poison oak

Poison oak, some boyhood bravery
When the telephone was a tin can on a string
And I fell asleep with you still talking to me
You said you weren't afraid to die
In polaroids you were dressed in women's clothes
Were you made ashamed, why'd you lock them in a drawer?
Well, I don't think that I ever loved you more

Than when you turned away, when you slammed the door
When you stole the car and drove towards Mexico
And you wrote bad checks just to fill your arm
I was young enough, I still believed in war

Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam

But me, I'm a single cell on the serpent's tongue
There's a muddy field where a garden was
And I'm glad you got away but I'm still stuck out here
My clothes are soaking wet from your brother's tears

And I never thought this life was possible
You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for

The end of paralysis, I was a statuette
Now I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench
And when I press the keys it all gets reversed
(The sound of loneliness makes me happier)