If It Were my Home

One of my new favorite activities with Li'l A is one reprised from my childhood. I recently copped a free-standing globe from the local Goodwill. It's hopelessly outdated (which explains why I was able to buy it for $ 4.99) but it's a lot of fun to quote a place and have Li'l A scramble to find it. To give him clues and watch him piece it together. To see him figure out that the revolutions of this Arab Spring are connected in the most tangible and environmental way possible--through land.

I can't wait to share the new If It Were My Home feature with him: You can compare your present life with postulated facts and conditions of your life if you had been born in some other country.

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Car Parable

Driving home.

Baby A: Mama did you know Dada had another car? But one day, when he was sleeping, a thief came and took it away.
[Sudden quiet. The air vibrates with strong, unsaid emotions.]

Me: Did it make you sad, NuNu?

Baby A: No. [Deep breaths.]
It makes me SO angry! If I ever see that thief... [Growling.]

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The thing about sunshine

The thing about sunshine is not only that I end up smiling at strangers all the time from sheer happiness. Even when I'm just squinting at the sun, the way I bare my teeth makes people think I'm smiling at them, so they smile back.

Net aggregate of smiles: impressive.

Limited Female Body Update, May 2011

Good News: "In an unusual move, Yale University publicly announced that it's finally disciplined Delta Kappa Epsilon, the frat that chanted, "No means yes! Yes means anal!" on campus in October."


Good News: "Media gets somethings right in covering the arrest of IMF head."


Bad News: Bernard-Henri Lévy "one of France's most famed philosophers, a journalist, and a bestselling writer" is, also, a crappy rape apologist. He defended Roman Polanski and now he's speaking up for Dominique Strauss Kahn. 


Naturally, this kind of disregard for women's bodies starts long before Strauss-Kahn walks out of his bathroom naked and proceeds to rape his immigrant, working-class, muslim--so profoundly othered--victim/nemesis. I see it beginning in the early--and lifelong--marking, othering, and targeting of female bodies. I see it in Skechers selling "toning shoes" to kids girls (apparently only female children need to tone) as young as seven. Petition here.

Goodnight

In the return of the sea
its standstill secret treats

I ready for sleep, alone
along a landlocked deep

Remote as light, as reason
is this compass of night

Fingers that refuse to pray--
stray in sweet reggae; delicious.

_

Rain Again

The past returns
lush
folded purple

like the explosion
of a
single match

the weight
and
storm of water

on wind like feet
the feet
of small children

trees try not to cry
the
pulpy drip of rain

_

And Again

The churn and whine
of starting over
The burning bushes
sing spring

you could say
the smiling of flowers
you could say
the flowering of smiles

amidst the day's landmarks
of talk, meals, and naps
the hesitation of last year,
fruit: a mouth full of beauty

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