I was reading a stolen copy of the New Yorker at a friend’s parents’ on the south side. Joyce Carol Oates had written a beautiful reflection on the last week of her husband’s life. I have not read her writing before but was really struck. She used the phrase “pools of memory.” She was writing specifically of hospital waiting rooms, but the expression pertains to those spaces which accumulate emotional residue. When I think of places where i have left puddles of memory, my mind flashes to my house in Majuro. I picture the bare and cracked concrete floor, dusty louvers, and rickety, crumbling furniture. As I put myself back in that place and remember the details, all these memories flood back at once: happy, sad, crushing. I remember small island kids like Alpert and Kilmej and Nako drawing pictures at our kitchen table. Quiet Saturday mornings, reading and drinking coffee while everyone else was asleep. I remember toward the end, when things were falling apart. The layers accrued. Pools of memory, so deep.

drop the k

time is short.

every second counts

down.

we can not be caught

sleeping,

watching,

waiting

because that is what we will be:

caught.

there is no time.

there is no time

but

now.

do not wait to do

until you feel

you know.

you will end up

doing

neither.

there is no know.

drop the k.

there is only

now.

thoughts on the soa

this is a much belated post i began and never finished...until now.

in november i went to columbus, georgia for the soa/whinsec protest*. i had been there 4 years before, when i was a jesuit volunteer. it was a much different experience this year. i went in association with the white rose catholic worker, a community in my neighborhood i have become friends with. we camped. chris climbed the fence and was taken into custody. regina and anne-marie were arrested by columbus police. eventually all were released. i watched the puppetistas performing and was so transfixed by this woman who seemed to be directing the performance while prancing around with a dazzling smile. her joy was so palpable and it made me want to be that happy.

the soa this year made me stop to think about a few things. i have been back from the marshall islands for exactly 2 years. i am blown away by this. have i been doing justice to all that i have learned? have i been living in a way that reflects these things that i say i hold dear? certainly i waste far too much time with things that clutter up my life with little real meaning. how do i change that? i'm not sure that becoming more of an activist and engaging in civil disobedience all over the place is the answer. rather, the joy of the puppetista girl, now there is an answer. i need to connect to things that make me smile like that. maybe i'll run away from home and become a puppetista.

*http://www.soaw.org/

a conversation lodged in my brain

i usually eat lunch with my coworkers. last week i ate with two of them and we discussed some things that are both interesting and not. they spoke of gas shortages in the '70s, mortgages, the current economic plight of the middle-class, and how in their estimation, most people of my generation would not be able to own their own home. then a lawyer brother-in-law came up whose more than half a million dollar salary just isn't enough anymore. i found myself becoming more and more upset, not angry, just sad. it was an incredibly depressing lunch.

it took a couple days to pinpoint why that was exactly. it was not so much what we were discussing but how it was being talked about. clearly, all of us were in agreement that this state of affairs is not good. yet there was this resignation in the air that "this is the way things are;" that this arrangement of power, rights, and impressed obligations is not really good for anybody but, "oh well, lets go back to work." i am ashamed that i did not give name to this feeling at the time, the feeling that there really is more (or perhaps more accurately, less) to everything than we are led to believe. we need to see that there are other ways, other stories, that different possibilities exist or can exist, but we can not see this when we walk lock-step with a system that tells us not to think and that defines things in its own hollow terms. the institutions of our society are not interested in enriching our communities but in monetary power. until we see this and have a genuine human reaction to it, we'll continue to just "go back to work."

all of this is stuck someplace i can't reach, like plaque on the inside curve of a molar. no amount of brushing can scrub it smooth.

the past 6 months, in pictures

i baked bread.

i hung out with will and andrea in camden.

i got a new bike.

i crashed it.

i moved to a gigantic house.

when it comes to being a photographer, i really don't take very many pictures.

elvis costello has been growing on me and all the little plants are driving their tender roots deep into the soil.  keep your ear to the ground; there is something rumbling down there.

a wave of the creative has taken hold of me and i've been engaging myself with all sorts of little projects.  i've been playing with sounds a bit and while nothing has really come out of it, the various ingredients of music are beginning to stew again.  i built a couple of small bookshelves.  it was nice to work with my hands.  i've been baking bread regularly.  jeremy says life is good when you have time to bake your own bread, but then again, you can make time for anything if you set your mind to it.  while all of these and other little undertakings have felt good, they haven't really scratched the itch.  i'm not satisfied.  i don't know what's going to do the trick or if the trick can be done, but lets try and find out, shall we?

in less self-centered news, there was a swine flu case in my neighborhood, rogers park.

while i was driving:

you can't keep anything

what you don't give away

will be taken from you.