Monday, January 28, 2008

Toni Morrison endorses Obama

I love her verbiage.


Morrison Endorses Obama for President

By NEDRA PICKLER,
AP
Posted: 2008-01-28 12:39:32
WASHINGTON (AP) - The woman who famously labeled Bill Clinton as the "first black president" is backing Barack Obama to be the second.

Author Toni Morrison said her endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate has little to do with Obama's race - he is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - but rather his personal gifts.

Writing with the touch of a poet in a letter to the Illinois senator, Morrison explained why she chose Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton for her first public presidential endorsement.

Morrison, whose acclaimed novels usually concentrate on the lives of black women, said she has admired Clinton for years because of her knowledge and mastery of politics, but then dismissed that experience in favor of Obama's vision.

"In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates," Morrison wrote. "That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it.

"Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace - that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom," Morrison wrote.

In 1998, Morrison wrote a column for the New Yorker magazine in which she wrote of Bill Clinton: "White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

Obama responded to Morrison's endorsement with a written statement: "Toni Morrison has touched a nation with the grace and beauty of her words, and I was deeply moved and honored by the letter she wrote and the support she is giving our campaign."

Monday, January 21, 2008

synthesis

I read (In Oprah's magazine, the font of all wisdom) a quote about complaining--that what you find to complain about in others is usually something you don't like in yourself. Hmmmm. Recent events have me considering my own indulgence in rage, in misdirection, in lack of compassion. There's something in there about energy management, self-knowledge, and finding ways to cull self-knowledge, to tease out the threads of who you are what you are really reacting to as you walk the complicated footpath we call life.

I'm mad at several people, but mostly God. I know the reasons that I'm mad at these people are where I'll find the learning I need, something essential to the growth and healing of my psyche. What a wonderful knowledge that is, what a massive realization, first, because it let's me know that I'm not really mad at these people (all of whom are so dear to me), but that I'm mad at the limitations of what is only human in them and in me. Mostly in me. I don't have a clue how to 'fix" these situations, other than to keep looking at them, talking about them in therapy, and being completely honest about my feelings, motivations and what I'm uncovering. That old saw about only being able to control oneself and one's behavior applies here. What can you do? What can't you do? You can do anything. That's where my anger at God comes in.

Because I know him/her/it/gaseous essense/undulating life force. And I know in it, all is possible--harmony, union, publication, rash free ass, peace, affordable dental insurance, a Black man in the White House, personal happiness and abundance, an end to offensive body odor and the ability to meet people/myself where we are and to decide what we will or will not indulge in or put up with. And my suffering is the inability to accept all these things (and more) are true for me.

wwwwoooooo, deep huh? Simple. And yet so hard to live.


And so on this day that we honor a man who could see all of this and more, who had faith that people could move from one place to another no matter how improbable it seemed at the time, I would like to apologize to myself and those I've been salty with. I feel great remorse for what I've put you through, and I am sorry for what I've been doing to myself. Maybe, just maybe, we can build something better between us or maybe it's too late or unrealistic for us to do so. But here's what I know--I intend to keep working on a better me, someone compassionate, understanding, and passionate, who acts out of what I know to be true.

(If you'd like to donate to the "therapy for Jo" fund, give me a buzz.)

This includes putting up the barriers I need to erect to define the kind of life I really want to live. That might mean that certain behaviors are no longer conducive to the kind of atmosphere I want to nurture. I think I'll get better at letting you know that as I progress.

And I know it's not about all work, because many of these revelations come to me in moments of joy when I'm paying no attention. The viligance of thinking that I have to continually concentrate on this stuff is exhausting anyway. I can look at the sea and see the infinity, the reach and the scope of what is possible. I can watch someone laugh and know why all is beautiful. I can hear my neighbor singing "Nessun Dorma" in a key not found in the human vocal range and experience perfection.

Now I'm sleepy, and achy, and I have to go to the bathroom. How wondrous is this life!

Monday, January 14, 2008

Cold Comfort

There's a funny movie called "Cold Comfort Farm" where an old, tyrannical granny keeps a-hold of her family, keeps them chained to the farm, by having "turns" and repeating ominously that she "saw something nasty in the woodshed," when she was a child. That's kind of how I'm feeling when the people I haven't seen for a while ask how I've been and I say "my cat died." Don't expect much from me, don't expect much interest, or smiling, or even daily hair combing. I saw something nasty in the woodshed. My kitty died and my grief shall control everything, erecting a force field around me that means don't bother me and don't expect the best in grooming. Don't expect me to squeal with delight over your engagement, or congratulate you on your new part in the play, or to exclaim over your new bedroom furniture, or to drool over a good meal. Nothing can touch my soul, everything tastes like sand, the days are dark, the nights are endless, my clothes sadly furless, my bed cold. Little, moth-eaten fake mousies litter the floor, and I'm becoming Ms. Havesham from "Great Expectations," stuck on the day that she died, litter box untouched, cat food cans stacked in the cupboard, the last scrapings from her scratching post laying on the floor in a pool of catnip that she rolled around in on our last day together. The water in her water dish has evaporated in the skin-cracking heat of my apartment but I dare not move it.

People have said "it's just like losing a person." I haven't lost many people, bless buddha, but if they mean that there's a screaming void where your heart used to be and you hate God for a while, that there's the relief from your grievee's suffering, that the slightest thing brings you to tears, then it is like that. My little unconditional love, puddle of fur, goofy, proud, chatty, Poopy Pie, my little Pickles, Woman, Recalcitrant, Gramma, Poopilicious, Little Diva--too much to inscribe on a headstone at the Happy Acres Pet Memorial.

And its also so hilarious. I got the bill from the vets who she was last with, $1,000---but euthanasia only costs $75. I was on my way to acupuncture when I opened it and saw that, and so was crying when I arrived at my appointment. Anthony, my dear needle dude, had me lay down, and put needles in my arms feet and one in the middle of my forehead--the third eye, my favorite point--and then he lowered the lights and I let the tears roll down my face and into my sideburns. Then it struck me--I'm laying there with a needle sticking straight out of my forehead, weeping like a baby. And my feet stank. At that moment I could feel Poopy's cold nose on my face, something she'd often do when I cried or was laying down in pain as if to say, "I'm here. Hmmm...what's this salty stuff? You right, girlfriend, your feet are rank!" And I had to laugh and chortle and snort.

I try really hard to resent other people's animal stories, but it's too hard. Their babies are so cute and they are so proud/mock angry/happy about their antics. And who else can understand that unspoken bond?

My co-workers and I have a ritual in the afternoon when the office turns into an oven where we go around and give each other one or two complaints each. The other day we went around the room, and K said he had to re-print a bunch of letters, and E said that she was too full from lunch, and A said that her shoes were pinching her feet, and D said the heat in the office was horrible, and I said "my cat is dead." And then we laughed for twenty minutes, that great release of energy, that lovely, soul cleansing, tear producing, howling that comes from the belly.

And so, like everything, there is a barrel full of the absurd.

I know one thing, I'm SICK of listening to NPR--it's as negative and war-driven as Fox News sometimes, bleak, bleak, bleak, presidential candidates ad infinitum, and even Terry Gross of "Fresh Air" is interviewing pundits. C'mon! I want a funky, funny interview with Bonnie Raitt, or a story about children learning to play cellos, or a Sarah Vowell piece on having to spend the night in the Cincinnati airport. Bush's ridiculous gallivanting through the middle east touting democracy--you must be out of your mind--democracy in countries where women aren't allowed to vote or show their ankles? A peace agreement between groups that will not stop tit-for-tat bombing? WILL NOT STOP. The silly, silly man doesn't know what to do with himself. Don't think, George, that the "legacy" room at that great monolithic building (built in the shape of a lasso) you'll build in Crawford, Texas, the Shrub Museum (no library cuz you never read a book in your life--maybe a comic book collection), will contain the pen you signed a peace accord with, or a copy of the document signaling lasting peace between the Israelis or Palestinians or even pictures of all the American children you helped through your domestic policies. I'll tell you what it should contain--an old FEMA trailer, rank with formaldehyde, the empty shoes of a child who died in this country because she was uninsured, a sculpture made with the 4000+ helmets of the soldiers who died in Iraq, a replica of a rodent infested room from the Bethesda Medical Center where they treat injured troops, the stuffed carcass of Jerry Falwell, Dick Cheney's first artificial heart, the gun he shot that dude in the face with and the scotch glass he was holding when he did it, a crayon drawing of your tiny brain (complete with both sprockets and the rubber band), and a blackboard covered with your scrawl, 1000 times having to write "Iran poses no threat to the United States." jerk.

Can I digress or what?

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

fly across the curve of the earth
past the sun
faster than wind
on a point of light
to an unfixed destination
a place with no location
an abyss
full of sunlight
a black hole of moon glow
an edgeless universe