my home

there is no place like home.
there is no greater joy than your laughter.
there is no stronger love than your embrace.
there is no better reason to live than to be with you.
my home is where my family is.

no lugar como el hogar.
no hay gozo mas grande que tu risa.
no amor mas fuerte que tu abrazo.
no hay mejor razon para vivir que estar contigo.
mi hogar es donde esta mi familia.



~June 2012

Life

Life of mystery. Life of misery.
Here I am inside a building, in my apartment, on my own bed.
Connected through this device to a world wide web of others like me,
inside of buildings, in their apartments, on their own beds.

But this web does not connect me in the same way
to those who know of no buildings, apartments, or beds,
much less of virtual webs.

Life: no longer free, no longer natural.
But surveilled and manufactured
through webs of hope, myths and greed.

Should I surf away and pretend there is nothing more
than buildings, apartments and beds?

Eastern and Western attitudes toward nature

A seventeenth-century Japanese haiku by Basho:

When I look carefully

I see the nazuna blooming

By the hedge!

A nineteenth-century poem by Alfred Tennyson:

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower--but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

The Buddhist philosopher Suzuki (1960) observes that the Japanese poet does not pluck the nazuna but is content to admire it from a respectful distance; his feelings are "too full, too deep, and he has no desire to conceptualize it" (3). Tennyson, in contrast, is active and analytical. He rips the plant by its roots, destroying it in the very act of admiring it. "He does not apparently care for its destiny. His curiosity must be satisfied. As some medical scientists do, he would vivisect the flower" (3).

Tennyson's violent imagery is reminiscent of Francis Bacon's description of the natural scientist as one who must "torture nature's secrets from her" and make her a "slave" to mankind (Merchant 1980: 169). Principles of monism, holism, and balanced complementarity in nature, which can temper perceptions of opposition and conflict, have largely given way to the analytic urge in the recent history of Western culture.

(from "A Critical-Interpretive Approach in Medical Anthropology: Rituals and Routines of Discipline and Dissent" by Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, 1990)

undeniably you.

i dreamed you last night.
i combed your hair to my liking.
i dressed you up with new clothes.
i placed you where i could find you.
and so i did.

i dreamed you last night.
but you were still you, undeniably you.

you smiled when you saw me,
we said jokes and we laughed.
i followed you to your hiding place
but you said "STOP,
this is all you'll get from me,
even in your dreams."

============

a bit dramatic, right? well, dreams tend to be. but having dreamed of you makes me smile. i remember you fondly.

Guatemala:

you fall heavily on my chest.
i cannot breathe.
a smile silenced by hunger.
a heart turn cold by powder.

oh hands chipped by the sun.
oh backs broken by labor.
tell me you can see beauty.
tell me you want to go on.
tell me you are still waiting for tomorrow's sun.