We watched Amreeka last night and the actress, Nisreen Faour, was so engaging as a newly arrived to the U.S. Palestinian mother trying to find the best place for her son to grow up; I expect we’ll see more from her. The movie is definitely worth renting – add it to your Netflix list. The Arabic music was as familiar to me as Sephardic music, the food was most of what I grew up eating because…
“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m leaning to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott It’s not stormy weather around here, it’s actually beautiful but there are so many fronts of action (like there always are, she says to herself) and I’m just running here, and jumping there, and ending my days spent. But last night we started watching Amreeka and I actually can’t wait to get back to part two (oh, the days when…
I’ve been getting calls from concerned people wondering how we are doing here in New Orleans. And we’re fine albeit those barges look like they are eye level when they float by because the river is so high. One hotel in the wake of the river had this on their website in Memphis: As we are sure you have heard of the rising Mississippi river waters in relation to Memphis and possibly some mis-information, we…
DIARY Steadiness, all of a sudden, is not a state. Nor is it omen or greeting. Steadiness, all of a sudden, is perpetual war waged at the furthest borders of the day. On the tongue of first light, o to speak, or the slaked lime of nightfall. by Luis Muñoz
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME One thing’s for sure: these years won’t come again. You will live out your meagre share of apportioned time, your eyes will be fretted with shadows and, after a while, the light will annul your face in the null of the glass. And it won’t be that long, so they say, till you’re sick to your soul of watching, as the windows fade to grey, sifting the dregs of your…
T’s friend and poet Luis Muñoz told her he liked Simic’s poetry – I do too! This Morning by Charles Simic Enter without knocking, hard-working ant. I’m just sitting here mulling over What to do this dark, overcast day? It was a night of the radio turned down low, Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams. I woke up lovesick and confused. I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing And some bird answering her, But…
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” Henry Miller
One two buckle my shoe Three four open the door Five six pick up sticks Last night, when Tin had demanded yet one more reading of Bad Kitty, we switched back to the Family Book that I had made for him a while back that describes his coming to the world and to us in the form of a fairy tale – the thousand miles, to be exact, that we had to bridge to be…
A friend wrote me the other day that he was going out for a long bike ride to figure out his life. His life. What would he do with his life? He’s young, I thought, more importantly what will I do with my life? Another friend who is about to retire said the whole notion is unnerving, to be entering a time when the years of making money are behind you. I said embrace the…
When I was a pre-teen in Puerto Rico we had slam books – a composition book that you posed a question and your friends answered in it, along with other notes that accumulated in them. Where those slam books are now I have no idea. When I first got on My Space it was only due to intellectual curiosity and so it was that I followed the social media path reluctantly to Facebook because I…