"I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about 'Where do we go from here,' that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the oil?' You begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?' These are questions that must be asked."

-Martin Luther King, Jr, in his speech Where Do We Go From Here?

Happy Solstice

rejoice in the longest days of the year

on note-taking, and unanswerable questions

Adam Gopnik: "

All grown-up craft depends on sustaining a frozen moment from childhood: scientists, it is said, are forever four years old, wide-eyed and self-centered; writers are forever eight, over-aware and indignant."

Going through an old notebook from San Francisco days, a season of such questions, questions that continue to haunt me.

What is the difference between Truth and truths? What does it mean to pursue Truth?
How can something be true and untrue at once? (to live life in paradox)

to tell the story of someone erased:
Does the story trump everything? Can concessions to truth be made in the name of story (or concessions to fact, at least?) What is ethical writing?

My words are ribbons, prayer flags strung together in primary colors
you do the best with what you know, until you know better.

Poking holes in my world--realizing that the world in which I live is not the world in which most people live
(universalizing your own experience)

Part of our education is unlearning (deconstructing): awareness as the beginning of wisdom
-of what we don't know
-of what we fail to notice

East of Eden / Steinbeck

Lee poured a tumbler full of dark liquor from the round stone bottle and sipped it and opened his mouth to get the double taste on the back of his tongue. "No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt humans have!...and, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And here I make a rule--a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar."

if it's the beaches / the avett brothers

Don't say it's over
Cause that's the worst news I could hear
I swear that I will do my best to be here
jus the way you like it
Even though its hard to hide, push my feelings all aside
I will rearrange my plans and change for you.

If it's the beaches, if it's the beaches' sands you want
Then you will have them
If it's the mountains' bending rivers
Then you will have them
If it's the wish to run away, then I will grant it
Take whatever you think of while I go gas up the truck
Pack the old love letters up
We will read them when we forget why we left here.

I am alone, I am not alone. I am water flowing, going, another, another father, another fire, flood, place, tribe. Tribe I remember. I remember your held name, strong, sweet, your forgotten name. I remember name, your woven existence, your fiery, unfamiliar name. I remember your nomad face, your glittering eyes, your carpenter hands. I remember and forget.
[All things turn to fire and flood and you are nomad and I am water and we are alone and not alone.]
Chant, chant your unfamiliar name. Pull vowels forgotten from your stomach. I come from that same dark place. I come from the river stitched by four sisters (or were there five?), broken by soil and sod, sand and red, red brick of dirt under your hardened fingernails. Time’s cellar, a skinless pendulum shortening and lengthening our powwow, our obsession. Your cold river sheets gritty with sand.
I blame that wildfire making hitchhikers out of us, pitching our tents not in romantic, djembed Bedouin ways but in the carving rock of desert slicing into your shoulders, your ribs, your abdomen, into my unfamiliar sister breasts, sandwiched and catalogued between sandy rivered sheets where only the kitchen table survives fire and flood.

[on being back]

People look older. Some have gained weight,
or are losing a little hair,
Others have grown thinner, facial structures more pronounced.

I've been in the desert since Thursday, Anza Borrego, the Salton Sea, strange places,
felt the 6.9 quake with Elly,
my grandmother who kept cordially asking what we do, where we work, who we are.

Now it's back to this beach town, after nearly a year
Staggering in the streets at the smell of climbing wisteria and jasmine
walking at the salty ocean between windy surf and stars

I burst, it shattered through me like a bullet through a bottle
(telling me to believe that all of this is real).