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Slant
Slant is how best it goes when it knows not wither or why it goes, truth or not ruth, entertainment or catastrophe, yet slant’s elusive as firmament’s first fire was there a first photon or were all and awe then self-entangled, then, as now , caught in the net of nothing stretched impossibly to bear being beyond themselves, ah, light yes light, this light, slant, makes sight and shadow the worrisome wisdom of our delight, the fierce fervor of our burgeoning fright as climate changes, so our climax, too my self, illusion, to itself is slight and slant as well, star, lost in its own... read moreIn Brazilian Portuguese
In Brazilian Portuguese the samba is the sonnet, lovely lazy lively lilt slipping through shoulders, hips, lips, toes, hands to be breath and so smooth how time flowers Before there were any words, Jobim made sun, sand, sea, saudade, me, and the girl who was completely sound without need of flesh, she of the slightest stirrings of our air No knowing now, ever, how samba means outside itself, except it lilts us let go grip of grasping selves, dance with shadows sculpted from blocking light of this, this… life ah, sway, syncopated, counting deeper sweeter than any beat, more…less... read moreEnvy
Envy is a pygmy with a blow gun shooting venomous darts. Often these are words that take aim at the heat and try to stop it from beating. read moreOur Responsibility To The Dead
What is our responsibility to the dead? Only the care of all that lives. This is a sentiment that strikes me as strange but true, not one that I would have expected to discover within my breast in my heart when I was younger. It connects me with the ancestor worship that is so fundamental because we owe everything to our ancestors without whom we would not be. The sun, too, is our ancestor, that young star by whose light we... read more“The Russian Likes To Remember…
“The Russian likes to remember, he does not like to live.” Chekhov
Living is fraught with uncertainty. Living is fraught with peril. Living is nothing if not a stew of ambiguities. Living demands effort. Living is work. Living is always poised near the cliff of annihilation even on a sunny spring afternoon of a near ideal temperature. Living is fleeting, always charged with the dynamic bodily necessities of tomorrow and the day after. Living involves real other people who are endlessly disappointed and disappointing and who are never quite what they seem, so we are always shaking our heads over what poor judges of character we have been
I think that I may be more Russian than I have ever realized.
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