Review of the novel The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

    "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge."*

     If you can come up with a more gripping first sentence, tell me, because I can't find one. I am quite biased, true, since I know the rest of the tale. I don't care; it's a stellar beginning to a book I could just sit with all day and flip through, marveling at the dazzling strands of story/web that Atwood spins so skillfully. 
     And the many threads of this tale - be they elements of science fiction, family relations, the nature of war - pull a reader in slowly, without warning as s/he navigates the layers: The narrative of Iris Chase Griffin and her sister, Laura, is only the beginning. Set against the historical backdrop of the last century, these two daughters of a once rich and influential Ontario family are also the subjects of much ridicule and suspicion. And there are so many dimensions that are pieced out, luring the reader to continue - fragments and hints. As one begins to map out the mystery surrounding Laura's death with the details that the now elderly and confessional Iris wishes to divulge, there is a sense of great depth and breadth to the novel. Atwood may be telling a very specific fictional tale, but there is also truth residing within - about the nature of family, friendships, grudges, overwhelming sadness and love. 



*Excerpt from the novel

Love for the graphic novel The Arrival by Shaun Tan

     I can barely imagine what it would be like to navigate a new environment where I could not speak the common language and communicate with others. Because in my reality, even when I have been in countries, I can always revert to English. It can so easily be your only language - it's relatively simple in most foreign places to tell someone of that nation that you don't speak their language, only English. It's a true privilege to be able to speak this world-dominating language. 
     Along this line of thought, images can say so many innumerable, infinitely diverse things - think a picture can speak a thousand words. And they can be employed to voice something simply and across the so often thorny, tricky barriers of language. A gorgeous image's ability to be evocative is indeterminable. And an image's ability to transcend what seems fundamentally different and alien renders it, at times, much more powerful than words in any given language. 
     This power is what makes Shaun Tan's graphic novel The Arrival so extraordinary. It is a tale told only in images - there are no words written on any of the pages. This brings those who pick up the book into league with the protagonist, a man who - in a true worldly story - has come to the decision to journey far from home. He is sailing to a distant foreign land in order to begin constructing a better life for the family he left behind. He does not speak the language of the new land he has arrived in. And he is thrown immediately into a crowded, busy environment full of alien sights and sounds, populated by such various people, all with whom he cannot communicate in a common spoken language. So he learns to use simple drawn images to voice his many questions and needs to those who take the time to attempt conversing with him. And slowly this unnamed man begins gaining traction in the slippery foreign society in which he is establishing a new life.
     The story is simple and common in our increasingly fluid society. It is full of recognizable themes. Yet it also has such complexity and such layers - think about how there are still much-debated wars over borders between countries and nation-states all throughout the world. And media storms over the legitimacy of refugee claims and immigrant status within our own country. There are battles fought on state level about the cultural acceptance of foreign languages being spoken in certain settings, such as schools and other institutions. There are so many obstacles that we have fabricated that vastly distance us from other people - those we have deemed foreign and fundamentally different from us.  
     It's my aim to see more of the commonality between myself and others. This is a constant, uphill process. And it is important to always remember, while undertaking this course of action, that discovering a commonality does not mean I immediately understand someone else. A similar circumstance or factor is only part of the context of that other person. Based on that, I should not fool myself into believing I have a complete blueprint for who that person is. Instead, commonalities should be seen as building blocks on which to begin constructing further awareness. Like simple pictures which can be infinitely added to. 
     Perhaps what I've pulled from this graphic novel is too granola-ish, too much peace-loving nonsense. I've been accused of that before. But what's wrong with thinking this way? Why is it a bad thing to decipher great possibility in different forms of expression? I believe it leaves a lot to the potential of each individual as they bring their own contextual lens to something, allowing everyone their own interpretation. That should be exciting, not scary, right?
     At some point in our personal family lineages someone left the old country for the new, to pave the way for what they hoped would be better lives. We all have some ties to immigration, in one way or another. It's silly to deny it and pretend that those who aim to seek out asylum and hope in our country nowadays are so different from our ancestors - wherever they may have traveled from. We should trace our histories as we look at these people and remember always that there are foundations for understanding. They are present at the many intersections between their narratives and our own.

Adoration for the anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness

In the dark times, will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.*
                                            -Bertolt Brecht

     Extremity - that which pushes us to the edge of experience - is a universal touchstone. And upon it, those who once believed they suffered alone through their tortures can find innumerable company. It is what joins "them" and "us." We must speak our experiences, our pain, the hurt that endeavors to isolate each of us from one another. This is that which has a common language, if only we attempt to voice it to someone, anyone else. Think on those things that make you want to laugh, shout, rejoice, wail - that which causes you to truly feel beyond the usual, the mundane, the everyday. Those are what we should share. Those are the links of commonality between us despite any distances of geography, culture, creed, or time.   
     An anthology that attempts to bear testament to the extreme of human experience and endurance, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness was edited by the esteemed poet Carolyn Forche. The heavy volume draws from other noted poets throughout the former century, across a broad spectrum of tumultuous human rights events - war, torture, exile, repression - from the Armenian genocide to World War II to Tiananmen Square. It certainly doesn't cover everything that it could and should, and that is my only qualm with the anthology - but save that for the second volume, which is sure to come. Here, the collected works of these poets are each unique in detail and voice. Yet there is a connecting harmony running through every one that is, at first, faint and gentle. But it builds as a reader ventures farther within, gathering strength, creating a familiar rhythm that deeply resonates. And it lingers, continuing to sing - erasing that which has always seemed insurmountable. So that we can look upon one another with some bit of recognition, no matter the superficial differences present. That should stay at the forefront of every individual's mind after finishing Against Forgetting. Take the title as a motto, a creed, and a purpose to carry with as you move through this vast and varied world.

     

WHAT HAPPENS

It has happened
and it goes on happening 
and will happen again
if nothing happens to stop it

The innocent know nothing
because they are too innocent
and the guilty know nothing
because they are too guilty

The poor do not notice 
because they are too poor
and the rich do not notice 
because they are too rich

The stupid shrug their shoulders
because they are too stupid
and the clever shrug their shoulders
because they are too clever.

The young do not care 
because they are too young
and the old do not care
because they are too old

That is why nothing happens
to stop it
and that is why it has happened
and goes on happening and will happen again

-Written by Tadeusz Rozewicz
(Translated by Robert A. Maguire and Magnus Jan Krynski)






*Excerpt from the poem Motto by Bertolt Brecht as quoted in the anthology.

Review of the film The Loneliest Planet

“Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.” 
                                   - Sigmund Freud
                                    The Interpretation of Dreams

     The Loneliest Planet is a film that lives in the wordless exchanges between its characters. And there are innumerable interactions that occur without any one speaking at all. The body conveys so much - the gentle tilting of a head, the brushing together of arms, the sharp narrowing of the eyes, the sudden entire body jerk of fright - we can recognize significance, and there are things that never need be voiced to be understood. 
      Sometimes this is a knowledge - a sneaking suspicion - that we are not even fully aware we possess until later. We are so caught up in the moment that our brains highlight some things, what seems essential, and submerge others. These hidden pieces of information may not be above that line of full consciousness, but they are there. And they will remain in the unconscious until that quicksilver second of recognition. Then we are left wondering how we had not fully realized their magnitude until now.
     This film unyieldingly explores a short few days in a relationship, between a young man and a young woman. They are intimate and in love - infatuated? - with each other and engaged to be married. They are on a trekking adventure through the country of Georgia, which is a greatly mountainous land lying beneath the great northern bulk of Russia and just above the desert coastal countries of the Middle East. The wilderness of foothills and valleys of these Caucasus Mountains are astonishing in beauty. But there is a foreboding nature to them as well - it is so quiet and desolate. There are moments when the couple's hired native guide suddenly puts up a hand to silence and halt them, and the air is undeniably impregnated with a sense of danger. As if someone is following them, unseen but uncomfortably close behind with sinister motives. But then they begin hiking again, and the young pair is laughing and talking as if nothing is astir except the mountain breeze and the cold water of the rocky valley creeks. We almost forget.
     Then that thing happens, the one we've been expecting. And it is still surprising and shocking, and it changes everything. And the event lasts less than three minutes. But its significance is without question - these two characters, this couple who had seemed so compatible and nakedly in love, may not be exactly who the other was so certain of. Again, there is not much dialogue, yet it is overwhelming to watch their faces in the moments and hours after, as they continue their trek. And the new ways in which they interact with each other and their guide. 
     There are no words to adequately describe what has occurred, what has changed, but there is visible reconsidering and realization creeping through every expression, gesture, and interaction. All around them, the vastness and ancientness of the mountains extend to every horizon. Rendered tiny and vulnerable by those heights and depths, the three walk towards the night that awaits them, and the two foreigners are unsure of what it will bring.
     A quiet meditation of a film, The Loneliest Planet offers what seems a simple story. But there is also a profound psychological narrative at play throughout. How well can we know each other? How knowable are we to others? To ourselves even? And what happens when we are caught violently off guard - and what transpires is so far from anything we could have ever imagined? What becomes of us? And, perhaps, we also ask ourselves in silent moments of naked vulnerability, was it really so unimaginable after all? Maybe there was evidence all along, evidence that we overlooked, submerged beneath the surface of our consciousness. We were just so caught up in the story that we were telling ourselves - a far simpler tale than the truth suddenly laid bare.

Review of the documentary film Life Itself

     In 1999, the popular film critic and media personality Roger Ebert told his wife, Chaz, of something he had decided that became integral to his future life and character. This proclamation came shortly after the death of his contentious rival/colleague and dear friend, Gene Siskel. The latter man had suffered very privately from terminal brain cancer, which Ebert had been kept unaware of until the last possible moment. Ebert and his wife were planning on going to visit Siskel in the hospital on a Monday morning when he died the Saturday afternoon before. The surviving member of Siskel & Ebert & The Movies was devastated, not only by the loss of his friend, but also by the secrecy surrounding the terminal nature of Siskel's condition. 
     After a short while spent quietly processing, Ebert stated to Chaz that - if he ever fell ill in a similar fashion - he would never want to hide his condition, especially not from the people he loved. So a few years after his thyroid cancer diagnosis along with numerous surgeries and stays in the hospital and rehab, Ebert invited documentarian Steve James into his life to create a film to that built off his memoir by the same name. Steve James is the noted filmmaker of Hoop Dreams, which Ebert had declared was the greatest movie of the 1990s. Ebert's sincere and widely-heard accolades of that documentary helped launched it and its director into international fame and esteem. Despite this, the biographical film that emerges from James, with Ebert's enthusiastic cooperation, is not simply and purely exultation of the writer. It is true that James has great respect for Ebert and that shows throughout the film. This is most evident in how multi-layered the portrait of the man becomes as the director takes great swaths of time, life events, friend and family interviews, and moments with Ebert himself. There are passages narrated by the man's voice, which had been lost due to the invasive cancer surgeries, and they are handled with the grace of poetry. One can gather from the words why the writer has always been so well received. There are other pieces that are not always cheery - Ebert has been described as someone who was ostentatiously stubborn and petulant, as well as vain. James finds a lovely balance among the many sections of the man's life that he uses to to construct the film. The overall picture is that of a real man - and that is why Ebert would have approved. 
     Watching the man and his wife, Chaz, interact, one can view plainly how much the two complemented each other. And how much love lived between them. Ebert may have been pig-headed at times, but he truly enjoyed other people. The snippets of the film that give us other's stories and recollections of Ebert prove so interesting for this reason. A former producer or colleague may not have completely positive things to say about their interactions with the late writer, but each always has at least one glowing fragment to give. And as they add up, it is becomes clear that there is continual illustration of how he unquestionably impacted those who were around him. He was not a man that was easily forgotten as he moved in and out of other people's lives.  
     Roger Ebert loved movies so sincerely, and that was also abundantly clear throughout his life and those parts shown in the film. With the clout he gained from all his years and accolades as a writer and television personality, he pushed for the further accessibility of films. His writing about movies aimed for accessibility as well. As a young adolescent, I used to read Ebert's reviews with reverence and awe at his ability to compress so much information and so many lofty ideas about a particular film into such a tight, controlled space. He was a great writer. And a great champion of the movie industry - small and large. 
     His writing and every movie review he ever issued are collected at rogerebert.com. There one will find a diverse collection of new and old writers publishing reviews and op-ed pieces, that are in keeping with the spirit of the site's namesake. That is to say, they are all truly unique in voice and view. This site and the film, Life Itself, are lovely and lively tributes to a man's whose own voice will resonate long beyond the time of his passing. And in the memories of those who loved and honored his life.

Review of the poetry collection The Subsequent Blues by Gary Copeland Lilley

     At times the writing in this thin volume is slow and careful in rhythm - lilting like easy waves lapping at the reader's ankles - but then it all turns, as if on the tip of a needle, towards fast staccato beats that rush forward and lay one flat. Wash over your head in a fierce tidal wave. Leave you startled and gulping oxygen on the shore. These poems know what they're doing. They're lived in and precise - full of well-worn flesh and whispered echoes of bluesy guitar floating upon air laced with cigarette smoke.                
     Truth resides here as well. Lilley's verse weaves stark realism with the spiritual, crafting myths of honest witness to the good, the bad, and all the shades of in between coloring this earth. Quietly lovely and then brazen and arresting in the exhilaration emitted. Drugs and booze, love and hate, life and death all sing inside the covers of this collection. And, after putting it down, one is left sensing a renewed and refreshed contact with the world.

KING ELIJAH'S DIRECTIONS TO THE GRAVEYARD

The sweet musk of plowed dirt, over country 
as dark as the chamber of a cold heart
or an oiled pistol.  The melancholy
of whiskey and guitar, a blue steel night.
No moon slash or razor.   There is no star
as good a guide as the tombstone neon
that hangs over the long bar, the half-full glass
where talk swings dry, thin, and quick, and red eye
cigarettes beckon through the haze.  Jukebox
jumps, a saxophone pushes smoke to the ceiling.
A rattle of bullets and ball and chain,
the dust raising dance of hoodoo saints.
A prayer sung like rainfall, and everyone
that you see in there is already gone.


-from the collection, written by Gary Copeland Lilley

Review of the novella collection The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness by Rick Bass

“The heart of it all is mystery, and science is at best only the peripheral trappings to that mystery -- a ragged barbed-wire fence through which mystery travels, back and forth, unencumbered by anything so frail as man's knowledge.”* 

     I need some out of doors, natural world contemplative, wilderness and universe glorifying reading right now. It's about that time. When the realization of this habitual yearning finally dawns on me, the first book I always reach for is Rick Bass's collection of three novellas, The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness. The Texas-born and Montana Yaak Valley-dwelling author excels in the short form of literature. And he is one of the few American writers who can consistently and seamlessly marry his deep adoration for the wilderness with the fictional tales he puts on page.
     The ethereal yet realistic stories that comprise this collection are all rooted firmly in the land. And a deep respect and awe for how that land which his characters inhabit comes to inhabits them as they pass through on the eye blink-quick trajectories of their lives. Bass's characters find themselves altered by the rocks, rivers, meadows, and trees that they so naively believed they had total dominion over. 
     In the first tale, a desperate man chases his resourceful, quick-witted wife through the winter-heavy foothills of the north country. She lures and thwarts his progress over and over, until it is uncertain who is attempting to ensnare whom. The second story centers around a young and brash oil surveyor in flight above the Appalachians and the site of the ancient sea that formed them so long ago. The author's reverence for the natural world is clearly spoken through the ruminations and words of a childless woman returning to the vast tract of west Texas land on which she was raised in the final story. She is the last of her family left alive to keep claim of this ranch that has been their's since before Texas became a state. And she takes stock of and wonders at the wild terrain that will surely outlive her.
      These men and women again and again discover their existences bumping up against the inevitable mortality that waits for all. Because what is left behind when we die but the land? No matter how drastically we alter the landscape, or however long we believe we have ownership of those rocks and trees, they will replenish, thrive even, long beyond the brief specks of our lives by millennia. 


*excerpt from the title novella.
     

Thoughts inspired by the television series True Detective: Season 1

     I realize that I'm a little late to the review party on this one. I'm almost always early to parties, unfashionably so. But, in this case, I'm so unfashionably tardy. Oh well.  
     I've had a lot on my mind lately. And my thoughts on the first season of HBO's True Detective were somewhere in that whirlpool occupying my head space as well. It is only in the last few weeks and days, as I read and read and am near overflowing with reactions to the Elliot Rodger killing spree in California, that those reflections surrounding this television series began to spill over into the forefront once again. I guess the threads of the real life tragedy have become knotted together with the frayed, dangling ends of the somber fictional tale floating about in my brain.
    It is not my intent to infer that Rodger and the wholly imaginary killer of True Detective: Season 1 are the same thing. They are not. But they are of the same cruel world, the same culture of misogyny, privilege and entitlement. Please allow me a little elaboration - or flight of fancy - whatever the following might be named.
     In season one of the series, detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart, as written by the creators of the show, swirl some mighty thick and dark waters. And throughout the confined narrative, we catch fleeting, shadowy glimpses of terrifying and powerful monsters lurking beneath that surface. Many decry the single, smaller - but still horrifying - beast of a man that ultimately emerges as a cop out. He doesn't seem to live up to the epic nature of those lurking monoliths that remain behind. The critics can argue about faulty harbingers of a vastly different conclusion to the story until their faces turn blue. Yes, I agree, those waters still harbor greater giants whose hides are thick with the armor of veiled decency and order - be it cloaks of religiosity, tailored suits of bureaucracy, tightly linked arms of family values, whatever - they are allowed to stay hidden. For now.
    On May 23, 2014, the horrific events caused by Rodger swirled to the surface and emerged. And certain threads of truths were drawn out with them and him, dripping from the young man's shoulders and back. Then they were deposited on the shore upon his death, like ropey strands leading back into the watery murk. And people - some outspoken and others more hesitant - began to pick up those cords and pull, tugging hand over hand to draw out that which would still remain concealed.
     There are those who, like viewers of True Detective: Season 1, had seen the dark shadows of things much bigger than the one singular man that surfaced. Now, those premonitions of larger monsters are becoming real through the evidence being dragged up. Their existence has been thoroughly rebuffed. Or whispered about by that population who knew the constant disavowals were false. But the beasts' very real outlines are becoming more distinguishable to all. They are taking on their true forms, and those who would deny them still seem increasingly absurd.
     So many wrongly believe that misogyny is a women's issue - that the realities of this constant force are simply a female problem. But this cultural climate is what we all swim in, and no one - not women, men, nor those who identify differently - can remain unchanged by that which is all around each of us. We are held inside it; we all breath, and digest the culture. To a different extent for each of us, true, but that effect is still present in our lives, shaping and filtering our individual contexts. 
     
"Yes, we should all be feminists, but too often we believe that the plight of the oppressed is solely the business of the oppressed, and that the society in which that oppression is born and grows and the role of the oppressors and beneficiaries are all somehow subordinate." 
    - “Yes, All Men” by Charles M. Blow in the New York Times section 'The Opinion Pages' on 06/01/14.
     
     And this is not just about misogyny and women, but also the privilege and entitlement afforded to so few at the expense of the majority. It is about racism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, egocentrism, greed, and hypocrisy. I could go all day on the wrongs that this is about. I hope others realize that the cumulative weight of these wrongs has an adverse effect on everyone - those oppressed and those perpetrators and those who fall into categories of both. 
     Maybe these wrongs can be become fleshed out and seen for what they are - drastically limiting facets of our culture. In True Detective: Season 1, the narrative introduces misty outlines of this - hinting at the grand architecture of society's ills. Even the utter lack of well-developed and progressive female characters can be seen as a suggestion of the misogynistic nature of the world portrayed therein. And/or it can be viewed as a glaring error by the creative team behind the show. Either way, it is extremely troubling to witness.
      Women were viewed in a very similar manner by Elliot Rodger. They did not possess true multi-dimensionality or full human agency. The way in which he talked about what women, and society too, owed him recalls the female characters inhabiting the edges of True Detective. They each serve a purpose - sex, titillation, sympathy, deepening male character development mostly - and then they fade again into the background and are forgotten, until their presence is needed for further narrative advancement. They are ornaments in this fictional universe. You could also say that about many of the sideline male characters of the show - like those of the biker gang the detectives must infiltrate and the entirety of the African American population living in the neighborhood Cohle must navigate out of during a police raid, both in the fifth episode of the season. One could argue that Elliot Rodger seemed to look at everyone, besides himself, that way too. 
     But it is most glaring when examining the view of women in each instance. When focusing on how they are portrayed in this television story and the story that Rodger seemed to be reading and telling himself, one can catch sight of those monsters over their shoulders, rising, revealing themselves for what they are - beastly structures constructed and fortified by concepts of misogyny, privilege, and entitlement. They continue to dip in and out of clear focus, misty and slippery, but they should be gazed upon by all and named accordingly. They make everyone perpetrators, victims, or some combination of the two - and I hope that, on a basic level, there are an increasing number of people who realize that those roles are not who any of us wish to be. We have been molded into inert bystanders of a society built on the bending and breaking backs of all. Instead, we need to clasp hold of those ropey strands left on the shoreline and begin to wade in.
    

Touch darkness and darkness touches you back.*

P.S. While I was writing this post, I listened to the Spotify playlist entitled "HBO's 'True Detective.'" It features 80 songs that were used over the course of the season, adding up to over 2 and 1/2 hours of awesome.


*Tagline from HBO's True Detective: Season 1

Thoughts inspired by the poetry collection Diving Into The Wreck by Adrienne Rich

"A man is asleep in the next room
     We are his dreams
     We have the heads and breasts of 
     women
     the bodies of birds of prey
     Sometimes we turn into silver serpents"
- excerpt from the poem Incipience by Adrienne Rich


"Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."  - Margaret Atwood


     I remember times when I have laughed at certain jokes and seemingly random aside comments of casual misogyny. I think back on those moments and wonder how I could have chuckled so easily? How readily these blatant suggestions and hints of gender/sexuality based violence have risen from some individuals' throats and out their mouths, falling upon the ears of those who know better. How could these persons be so cad about veiled but handy threats against others - those who are their friends, their coworkers, their lovers and family? How could we, me, giggle as though these threats are never carried out, that there are those among us, men and women, who suffer beneath the weight of their constant shadow? Why do we titter about what is a reality as though it were not? How is it that I myself can giggle when I could easily be made victim of such suggested acts? And, perhaps, be made yet another survivor or simple statistic...of the misogyny that dominates our culture...but that so many - possible victims and probable perpetrators - have willed themselves to believe is just innocent fodder, guiltless fuel for laughs over drinks and dinner.
    The hair on my skin stands on end every time, no matter how I may grin and chuckle, allow these moment to pass without raising objections. Because, I have now begun to understand, there was silent objection, muted query and closemouthed protest. And I can guess that it wasn't just my own disapproval. There are those around me whose hair also stands up in the same mum manner. They might not have a clear notion of why this is happening, but it's there - the cloudy idea that what is being said isn't funny, is too true to ever be simple, or simply humorous.         
     Every one loses in a misogynistic culture. Men and women and those innumerable individuals who do not/choose not to fall into that limiting, culturally-constructed binary of identity. Even those who would be labeled perpetrators - they are losing out too...on the better options, actions, and identities possible for themselves and for those with whom they come into contact and affect/are affected by.
    The currently commonplace phrases "Not All Men" and "Yes All Women" and the heinous words and, much worse, deafeningly loud actions of one perpetrator in California have been ringing in my ears as I both skim and sink into Adrienne Rich's seventh volume of poetry, Diving Into The Wreck: Poems 1971 - 1972. The precision of her language across such a range of experiences yields images so delicately personal yet, also, so revelatory in their universal nature. Rich renders clearly identifiable feelings and notions that were once foggy - shrouded in cloud...floating along the edges of conscious thought. She writes of loss, love, intent, despair. And of those horrible things that one person can do to another. This includes acts of terrifying violence...rape, homicide...events that seem so hard to imagine at more innocent moments but are so present all around, all the time...are reality for so many.   
     I grapple with my distance from/proximity to the events that swirl around and surround me. I fumble to make sense of the tectonic-plate-like shifting of roles for men and women throughout the world. I sometimes weep over what it feels like I owe to others because of those roles that I have been forced/willingly stepped into. And I despair over what others find their spines bending and splintering under the weight of. 
     So, in my struggle forward, treading - sometimes weakly, other times fiercely and with such great purpose - through the murk, I will discover a buoy at my fingertips and grab hold. Call it a romantic, silly mirage. Call it a privilege afforded to so few. Call it whatever the fuck you wish. But I will continue to reach for those small islands of respite and re-invigoration, like Rich's transcendent, gloriously fortifying poems. We all find our strength where we can.
     
"I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail."
                                           - excerpt from the poem Diving Into The Wreck by Adrienne Rich

     

RIP author, activist, dancer, singer, actress and all around fabulous human being Maya Angelou

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou