Miranda’s flowing verses dance from one line to the next, often without punctuation, through images in a painter’s mind. Her synesthetic meditations accept the unlikely couple – pain and beauty – walking together with casual awe through nature’s wonders. She pauses in the precipices of memory, observing transformation with an introvert’s sensitivity to light and celestial signifiers. Everything and everyone keeps moving, changeable as weather, all of it beyond control – of course we are anxious. An interconnected wisdom is modestly revealed with tender awareness of the life breathing all around her – not only the plants and animals and people, but even the rocks, waves, and raindrops, dishes, streetlamps, and paint chips send energy out into the world. Ultimately, she plants a hope that some magic might happen if we all stopped what we were doing, went outside and looked up at the sky at the same time.
– Alicia Grega (Miranda’s mom)
To be fair, she didn’t ask me for a blurb for her book. And she’s under no obligation to actually use it. Maybe it’s too silly to print “praise from my mom,” on a book. Understand, I do take both Miranda and her work very seriously. I admire her for self-publishing and not spending the next decade trying to shape herself into what some publisher thinks she needs to be in order to sell books. Writing blurbs like this is something I can do, so I did. I spent hours with her poems, with my editor brain turned off, just taking in what she created, grateful for the opportunity to get to know this beautiful brain & heart better. That she happens to be my daughter is astonishing.
Sometimes meditation is taking my cat for a walk in the morning before it gets too hot, watching her sniff every fern frond, simultaneously alert to dozens of different bird songs, feeling the sun on her fur, blinking into the intensity of unscreened light, climbing as far up the tree as her leash will allow.
She seems to trust I will pull back on the harness only to keep her safe — from whatever unknown lurks under the house, from ick behind the garbage cans, from cars that race through neighborhood streets more concerned with saving minutes than lives. She examines the waterdropped threads of spiderwebs, each hovering insect. The tiniest of butterflies, the first victim of her pounce.
When we first took these walks she startled at everything, but she’s gotten used to the sounds of this outside world, our backyard covered in Clover and Ivy, shaded by the tree that makes sticky white berry clusters.
It takes patience to walk a cat, to pause as often and as long as she does. And then you realize her animal obsession with the cats next door – the strays we cannot see but she can smell – is the same nature that inclines you to keep thinking of him even though you cannot have him.
She looks to me for permission to play with a worm, finally a real living thing that moves on its own not like her toys where she has to force the action. But then it works its way into the soil and she doesn’t understand this cruel magic that sucks up worms. She sniffs the soil furiously, shuffling under the leaves with her claws, agitated at the injustice. What else might be down there, what treasures in the world she never before thought to imagine?
Second day of summer, reading yoga mat sweat stains like Rorschach tests like tea leaves for the answers you refused to give me, for hope … I’ll soak up every ray of sun I can get. On days like this when the humidity is so high we can’t keep our faces dry and No one knows if it’s you or the exercise, Tears and sweat blend together in forlorn potion of eye sting. Love tried to look away, but now the motion’s limited by Swollen nerves, Inflamed with disappointment. It was not supposed to end like this – In the middle, With love letters cursed …
Limping into summer unbalanced, Faculties lost, Limbs missing, I shout into the digital void A dizzying black hole of silence- my words dead on arrival I have been deleted.
This cannot be my destiny.
I am a sore loser, Aching and throbbing all over. Rocked that the solid foundation keeping me straight for seven years Could dissolve in a firefly’s flash beneath my trusting peasant feet, Washing away in an invisible wave – Your private ocean. So much you never let me see.
Last week the intoxicating fragrance of honeysuckle lingered in the air today its resentful golden blooms wither scentless on the vine.
What is the word we call people who are being watched by the voyeur, stalked by the stalker?
No, not paranoid. (I have been reading Shirley Jackson …)
I only searched online for a few minutes but the term is not apparent. We name the active, traditionally male, party in this “relationship.” The passive, traditionally female, subject is just that – the recipient of the act. She is an empty, nameless vessel upon which the active aggressor places their vision.
Isn’t there almost always a persecutor? When we get that feeling we are being watched, it’s usually because we are. And if not today, then the haunt lingers from another time. When we felt insecure and threatened by someone who has taken a sudden interest in us.
I consider myself, in certain modest regards, to be a private person, confiding only in my inner circle. But I have put myself out there in excerpt, in print, and online, ephemera, scripts and scraps – bits and pieces of puzzle that would take years for anyone to assemble. I wouldn’t expect anyone to try – not even my poor children who I expect will throw some of the boxes I leave behind in the trash without removing the lids. Not because they don’t care, but they’ll grow tired. And really, I’d rather they spend their precious life’s time creating their own work, not drowning in mine.
In my teens and twenties, after I came out the other side of puberty, I actually enjoyed being on stage for a while. I sang and danced and didn’t care who was watching. It’s not that I enjoyed being watched. I don’t think I ever enjoyed that. I had been bullied and broken enough by a young age that I didn’t assume people would think well of me. But I did always want to be liked, to be admired. And later, desired. And so I tried to take control of my image, become the visible manifestation of a young woman that people would be inspired to treat the way I wanted to be treated. But this is not something one can control. As Anais Nin said, “We don’t see people are they are. We see people as we are.”
I did make a few friends over the years. Like-minded, beautiful, talented, brilliant people – most of whom I have failed to keep close. I didn’t make it easy to make friends. I wasn’t a desperate beggar out to please at all costs. The catch was I wanted people to like me for who I really am. I didn’t conform. I didn’t compromise my values or my vision to manipulate people against their will or better judgement. What I learned over time is that most people will like you for what you can do for them, for as long as you are in a position to keep doing it. If you can prove you walk the talk for long enough, they will respect you even if they don’t like you. And that can be enough.
There’s really nothing to be bitter about. Dare I quote myself? “This room can’t hold all of you who still live in my heart.” Don’t we regularly urge people to get rid of everything and everyone that no longer serves them? If it doesn’t make your life better … let it go and move on. Right? It’s okay. No hard feelings.
I wouldn’t say I try to be a good person. As in I don’t make a concerted effort against my nature to be good. I don’t enjoy cruelty or violence. I tend to share what I can with as many as I can. I am not a vengeful person. It’s my default to try and see from other people’s points of views. I want people to be safe and happy. It was never hard for me to see that other people’s needs are met before my own. But I am human, just like you, and I have done things that hurt people. I have done things some people probably think I should be ashamed of.
But I’m not a fan of shame and I beat myself up long enough for things that weren’t my fault to pick the whip up now that I’ve learned better. Shame is destructive rather than constructive and the people, perhaps, that should have it the most, have the least. Not judging anyone … but when a tool is used by the powerful to oppress the weak … they might want to test it upon themselves first to fully comprehend the damage it does.
What I try to do, is work daily within my means to give more than I take, to make more than I consume, and to be as loving and honest as possible. Simple responsibilities – no grandiose sense of debt – just paying the rent for this life I’ve been given. There’s an assumption we’re supposed to make the most of the life “God” gave us, yes? Point is, while I don’t broadcast every detail of my day, I have little use for lies or secrets. I can’t stop others from misleading or withholding, they have to make their own choices, but I believe in maintaining transparency.
So I am not too guarded about what I put out there. If I didn’t want anyone to know, I shouldn’t have done it. And I am a communicator. In my mind, life must be processed through art. That is what it means to me to be alive, beyond breathing and heart beating, art is the spirit. Art is a circle which is not complete until it is shared. I’ve never been too concerned with audience size. It’s more important that the act of art is fully consummated. The crowds of fame are a distraction I can live without. I am an introvert and better able to focus without too much fuss. The reality that most people are too busy with more important things than me to pay much attention suits me just fine.
So when suddenly it appears (damn you analytics) that someone is watching, closely, maybe even studying or scouring – I am caught off guard. I become fearful because I wasn’t prepared for this. I begin to see every word, every image I might present through the distorted lens of this stranger who might be looking for the worst, who wants to hate me or cause me harm.
How could anyone enjoy being this scrutinized subject for whom I can find no signifier? Tell me what pleasure is there in being the passive recipient of a gaze? To accept one’s lack of control is easy. To be confronted with the glare of curious agenda is dizzying. Paralyzed in the headlights. Is it safe to proceed? Will I carelessly create the evidence that will be used to destroy me? In the end, there is a survival instinct.
I was probably upset about something the first time I walked in Cathedral Cemetery. It’s only three blocks up the hill and so the fastest I can get into a park-like setting without getting in a car. I wouldn’t have had a car when I took that first walk. I went without one for five years after totaling my first Subaru.
It could have been an ordinary day but odds are I was crawling out of my skin with anxiety. Afraid of taking a drink I’d regret because of loneliness, because of my neurotic fear of unrequited love. Walking was one of the only things that helped. If I could at least tire myself out, one foot in front of the other, until I stopped wanting to disappear, then I could get through the rest of the day – have a cool-down popsicle and pretend to read or watch a movie. Or maybe keep listening to an audiobook I had gotten into during the walk. Those are the best walks. When the book is so good you can’t help getting sucked in no matter how much real life sucks.
After a few walks on scalding afternoons, I figured out a route of maximum tree line in the shadiest parts of the cemetery to stay as cool as possible. The route has evolved over the years but one section I never fail to miss is a dip into an older part of cemetery along a stretch of unpaved path. There’s a tree the path turns around as it heads back toward the main road. And that’s where I stop to pray.
The sky is enormous there. It often looks like three different skies depending on which direction you face. Storm clouds ahead. Fluffy cumulus to the right. Three gorgeous shades of blue with cirrus accents and contrails over the mountains behind me. I don’t know how or why this spot spoke to me the first time, but it’s where I had one of the many spiritual experiences I documented at the beginning of my AA journey.
I felt a connection. I asked for strength, for guidance. I prayed for some kind of a sign.
My memory is weak but I can remember the fear well enough.
I cried that love had abandoned me again, and then my phone rang, paces away from the spot where I had prayed. Or I received a text message just when I was about to give up hope. Or once I came home to find that an email had arrived at the very moment I had prayed under that tree.
Sometimes I saw signs in the clouds. A random rainbow when there had been no rain. The shape of a heart. Maybe it was a feeling – relief or renewed hope that all I had to do was keep loving without expectation of anything in return and everything would be okay.
In the end, it always was okay. And this has helped me get to today. Just get through the uncertainty. Wait for the dark clouds to blow away and the sky will clear again.
On good days, when I was happy, I still stopped to pray in that special spot, offering thanks and recommitting myself to service in gratitude for all the blessings I had received. Sometimes I prayed for others who I knew were struggling or sent out love to the universe.
My walks in the cemetery grew rarer after I was given the gift of a gym membership. But on days too beautiful to spend inside or when I could deal with being around people, the walk was always there for me. An old friend, a welcome change of pace.
And then the coronavirus shut everything down. Without the gym, that old walk has become my new daily habit. The cemetery is literally the only place I’ve been outside my house in weeks. And as this cursed year of 2020 would have it, I’ve found myself in need of strength and guidance again. I’m getting too old for broken hearts. I fear that like the bones that grow more brittle with age, my heart is no longer able to bounce back to an optimistic outlook. My daughter tells me 48 is young but I’m convinced after she moves out, I will die alone.
For all my prayer, why this lack of hope?
My prayers had been answered before and I wanted to believe they would be again. I had sinned, sure, but no more than anyone else, and I hadn’t I paid for those sins? In suffering, in trials carried with gracious trust, always giving back everything I could, doing the right thing as often as I could without expecting a reward.
I’m no saint, but my God is not a punishing God. I don’t believe shame or blame are helpful. And I’ve worked hard, trying to rewire myself, to stop beating myself up. My Goddess is not a judgmental, vengeful old white man on an intimidating throne in the sky. My god is all that is good in our consciousness, a mysterious force beyond human understanding, an innate sense we are born into this world in our hearts. There’s something cosmic in our DNA that guides us through our darker instincts intact and leads us away from destructive temptations. My god is love – unconditional love because no matter what evil we do, we are worthy of redemption as long as we are willing to change.
But now, in this new time of need, there were no signs. Nothing to see. Silence. No encouragements; no answers. I’ve gone home empty handed, got back to work. The work has kept me on track. People are counting on me and I cannot let them down.
Still trying to move forward but with no resolutions, no clues, I struggled even more to get through this last week. And that’s when things got weird.
I did take a photo of the murdered bird but I cannot post it. Instead, here is a Mary shrine from the other side of the cemetery where I prayed out of desperation when I felt my pleas had not been heard.
Instead of no signs, suddenly there was a murdered bird. Right on the path, steps from where I begged the skies for mercy. I saw feathers first, sprayed out before the bird’s body, ripped open and left behind by some predator.
That it was a bird had significance. An obvious symbol of my estranged love. Was this my sign? The signs had always been pleasant in the past. Rewarding. This was horrific. Was I supposed to understand it was over for good this time?
I couldn’t bear the thought. Maybe this was just a bizarre coincidence. Surely God hadn’t killed a bird to shake me from distress, urge me to move on?
On the way back to the house, I ran into another bird a block from my house. This one injured, probably stunned by a car, it lay inert in the middle of the road with its legs up in the air. It fluttered frantically as I approached, tried to upright itself and fly away but couldn’t. What was I supposed to do with this bird? Pick it up, carry it out of the road? Its sudden fluttering shocked me. I thought it was dead at first. I ran away. Then I hated myself for not getting the bird out of the road. I cursed my weakness. It would certainly be run over. It was going to die anyway … maybe that would be most merciful?
On the next day’s walk, there was no sign of either bird. As if the slate had been wiped clean. Could this be the sign? That renewal was possible even after such horror? It’s a stretch – there are no right answers here. Only what I can come to believe. The walk was uneventful. Better no signs than evidence of nature’s brutality.
But then Thursday – if I didn’t know better, I’d think God was getting annoyed with my pleas and decided to fuck with me. That’s what I get for putting stock in such silly superstition. But wait, I don’t believe in that kind of god, right? I am on no deity’s radar.
As I stand in my special place of prayer, reading the clouds like tea leaves, trying to make some meaning out of everything I don’t understand, an old man in a red Trump MAGA hat, dirty red v-neck sweater and baggy black jeans barely held up by their belt, appears out of nowhere and limps toward me.
He asks if I’m looking at the trees, if I like the wilderness.
What kind of sign is this? Not a cloud or a text tone but a real live poet?
Am I to be reminded of my calling to write, to compose, to recite, to perform those words?
Is it okay that I am going to be alone because I am meant to do this work, play the role that I have been assigned?
If only the poet had left when his poem was over. Nodded knowingly and wandered away … But instead, he tells me how to find his website, and that’s when it clicks.
I had met this man before.
He pulls a book out of his backpack to show me. Is he selling this to me, trying to get me to buy his book? Who does that? Walks up to a stranger communing with nature in the cemetery and tries to make a couple bucks?
This guy.
I remembered him from Staples. When I worked in the Print and Marketing department and felt sorry for a colleague who put way too much work into some Eagle Tree poem project for this man only to be scolded by him. In the end, he may have apologized. At least she didn’t seem to mind helping him. But he certainly wasn’t entitled to the free design work he demanded and he didn’t seem to appreciate it when I saw him at the counter.
The random poetry recital could have been a lovely moment – mysterious and inspiring. But nope. It had to get weird. It became fraudulent somehow … Like I was being laughed at.
I was almost afraid to walk on Friday. I considered driving to the park, but what if I were to run into …
I can’t stop praying just because I don’t like the messages I’m getting. I’ve walked earlier the past two days and did not run into the poet again. The skies have been beautiful, dramatic and changing but ultimately meaningless. I’ve read my spiritual texts and meditated every morning but I worry I’m losing my faith. Some kinds of suffering wear a soul down more than others, makes it all seem like a scam. Was everything I believed all these years just a lie? Or maybe I’m just shedding old skin, transforming again. I can’t stop praying because the communication has become automatic. I feel connected to the world around me even when I feel alone. Nature will not abandon me like people do. My cat is here with me while I type.
I told the poet I will buy his book after the summer is over and my school contracts renew and I don’t have to hold my breath that I’ll be able to pay rent or utility bills. He doesn’t think I will remember but I made a promise and I intend to keep it.
I would write this piece, I told myself, as he walked away, so that I wouldn’t forget to look up the website and find the book. He will forget me, though, he said, and won’t remember how, in that moment, he had decided to personalize the inscription. There was something special he wanted to say.
These words will have to remember for both of us. Not that I’ll send him a copy. But I write this today so neither one of us has to hold on. There’s too much to carry to add the weight of fleeting words. It’s better to let them go. Like the clouds. There will be a new sky tomorrow.
It’s not that I’m unorganized but like any writer or other creative person, I have scraps of inspiration that I haven’t processed all over the place.
Mainly, I have photos and screenshots removed from my phone in bulk and dumped into folders to be sorted out at a later date.
This morning, I found myself weeding through these files looking for theatre photos to share with my students in the coming weeks. Part our lesson plans is to share a little about our work as creative artists – this is what I’ve done – but with lots of photos for 2nd and 3rd graders.
This photo of Vietnam protesters near the University of Scranton in 1970 makes my brain buzz. It’s one of the many cool bits of inspiration I captured and saved and never processed. Content hoarding or raw materials patiently awaiting a rainy day?
I have so many folders. Folders for time periods, for projects, for portfolios, for freelance work, for volunteer work, for current work, for each class I teach and for resources I might be able to use in the future etc. etc.
So what’s one more folder? It occurred to me to slide all the clips of text and photos that made me feel something into a prompt folder. And then, write a series of poems in response to the ephemera. Not that I actually have time to do this. But if I can make time to exercise 30 minutes plus 15 minutes mediation plus an hour walk, I should be able to find 30 minutes to respond to a prompt.
For now, these lesson plans are demanding my attention. I don’t wish I could half-ass things, but … it is unfortunate sometimes that I have set the bar so high and stretch and stretch and stretch until it hurts.
I am fortunate that I love this work. I do love teaching. I love finding fun and engaging ways to bring students into mind-expanding exercises. I love to pull back the curtain and demystify the art, breaking it into tiny accomplishable steps that anyone can do. And I love seeing what they make in response to the inspiration.
But I can’t let myself love it so much, become so consumed with it that I stop making my own art. These prompts will help.
They might also help me get back on track with projects I’ve begun and then neglected. My series of “Role Model” essays for example … I just found notes from a chapter about Doris Day in a book I read (well, skimmed) last summer. I had forgotten all about those pages, about her, about the movies that changed my pre-conceived notion of who Doris Day was, what her characters must have meant to women then, and what they could mean to us now. I remember talking at length about Doris Day on Troubadours and Racounters but all of this had slipped my mind.
I’ve learned that when something really annoys me, makes me squirm in my chair and wrinkle my entire self into a disapproving frown, I should take a closer look.
What is it about this that’s ruffling me the wrong way? (I’m just going to leave those mixed metaphors there.)
I read about Elizabeth Gilbert’s “magic journal prompt” at YogaJournal.com last week in an article penned by the author, but headlined as if she was talking about herself in the third person.
(People talking about themselves in the third person is one of those things that makes me squirm.)
The prompt is supposed to help the reader “access the divine, unconditional love that’s within us all.” The idea of unconditional love makes me squirm. I believe the beautiful goodness humans are capable of, that power we call “God,” is in our DNA.
We are born with a need for nurture – before we have the awareness necessary to give love, we need to be cared for in order to thrive/survive. Most children receive a blend of nurture mixed with harsher lessons – neglect, resentment, frustration, impatience. I don’t believe I have been loved without condition. Ever. By anyone. Argue with me if you want, but this is honestly how I feel. So how bold would it be for me to assume I am capable of giving love, without restriction, in return?
I feel immense love for hundreds of people, including those who have wronged me. But I suspect there are limits. I have learned the hard way to put on my own oxygen mask first.
Back to Gilbert. She writes:
Every single day, I write a letter—a dialogue between myself and Love. It’s shockingly simple and radically life changing. All you have to do in order to respond to yourself as Love is imagine what you wish somebody else would say to you, and write it down. What have you been longing to hear another human being say to you your entire life? You write that.
Every day? Who has time for that? Oh, yeah. Elizabeth Gilbert does. And here we see my resentment bubbling up. Let me confess that I disapproved of the author before I had read a word she wrote. See my Goodreads review of City of Girls. I am one of those who assumed her guilty of “priv-lit” and therefore could not bring myself to read words that would salt my wounds. People like me, restricted by my budget and responsibilities to children, could never live the unencumbered way Gilbert’s protagonists seem to take for granted.
I can admit hearing the loving words I have been denied could be life-changing, but the idea of writing a self-love letter to myself every day is an absurd luxury.
The thing I wanted most for much of my childhood was to feel loved by my father. And then, long after I let that obsession go, when I was 47 years old, he moved into my house and hugged me and told me he loved me every day. Did it feel good? I don’t know. It’s possible I was suffering from depression, but I remember feeling frightened by my coldness. I had learned to get along without this. I didn’t know what to do with it now.
What is it I long to hear? I suspect I’ve stopped wanting because it’s the desire that’s painful. I’ve had to work a long time to accept the world as it is and not long for it to be otherwise.
Are the dreams still there? It is honest to think they have vanished because I’ve learned to shift perspective away from selfish desire.
Would resurrecting those dreams allow me to reach them or will I be setting myself up for disappointment? Do I really want what I always thought I wanted? What if I’ve come to terms with mediocrity? Is it possible that I’m happy enough sleeping alone in an unglamorous rental, driving a 15-year-old Subaru, working as a community college adjunct with two part-time jobs, slowly writing scripts that are not marketable enough to be produced by the map makers?
I don’t like these questions Elizabeth Gilbert. And perhaps that’s why I should be asking them. Asking the hard questions, coming to the truth about the dark parts of ourselves we’d rather not spend time with, is what writers do who want to create resonant work, who want to connect with readers who are lost and scared and looking for comfort in story.
Look, I went first. Tear open the wound and let the blood flow. We will heal again. That’s what the body does for us. It knows how to heal itself. That magic, too, is in our DNA.
Do you remember, child?
Hiding in the magical elsewhere of books
Seeking adventure on unsupervised bike rides
No one wondering where we were.
Then, like now, we walked wooded cemetery paths
Less afraid of the dead than the boredom of adulthood.
It would seem I spent a lifetime preparing for these sheltered days.
Weekends at the lake we made up games out of earth air fire and water
Lullabied after dark by cricket armies, parents full of beer and crackling bonfire,
Waking to the bossy cries of crow after crow after crow
in time to watch sleep’s misty blanket suddenly dissipate in the sunrise.
We swam alone from one shore to the other, hiked for blueberries,
Breathed to the pace of Phillies games on am radio,
and prayed it wouldn’t rain.
We ate the corn on the cob they gave us – no menus, no requests. No use in complaining.
We moved to the country before high school –
no cable TV or friends within walking distance.
When we could finally drive we didn’t know where to go
Rode around in the Camaro listening to The Cure, smoking cigarettes and drinking Dr. Pepper.
Grunge era college kids didn’t go clubbing. We passed the bong and drank bottom shelf booze in dorm rooms listening to Lollapalooza bands and rocking with the riot grrrls.
There was no World Wide Web; we didn’t know we were missing anything.
Spent my 20s at home turning babies into toddlers into clever little girls who watched us make life; not just consume it.
Compared to abuse, divorce, evictions, living with no hot water for months, no car for years, baking in a toaster oven, sleeping on a mattress on the floor until cancer surgery earned me a bed… these weeks of uncertain waiting are nothing if you haven’t got the virus.
If we are not fighting on the front lines of health care or life sustaining servitude, the only appropriate words are “Thank You.”
America, I fear your privilege is showing.
So many of us have only skimmed the surface of the pleasures you are so anxious to return to-
We have held our breath for decades, just barely getting by – this sacrifice is not a big deal.
Today, we stay home because it’s noble, not because we’re on house arrest. I’ll gladly take pajamas over thrift-store maxi skirts meant to hide the ankle bracelet from strangers.
It was painful to pull away from the bar in early sobriety but the party’s not worth it if it’s going to kill people.
More than seven years later it’s easy to say I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
I know I am not supposed to like this time – and I am flooded with compassion for the sick and the morning and the exhausted and the scared – and yes it’s going to get worse before it gets better –
but today, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to go back.
My daughter didn’t ask for cooking lessons before the virus. She spent her tips on take out with no fear of rainy days.
Every cough is an alarm. I keep taking my temperature, paranoid to pass on a silent sickness.
And yes, there is stress in pingponging back and forth from inspired gratitude for our better angels to the disgraceful political ego show.
But I don’t miss the frenzy of packing four bags to work two jobs, feeling guilty if I don’t fit in 45 minutes at the gym.
Working from home is an introvert’s dream. Extroverts keep your numbers, there is safety in solitude.
I will miss the luxury of daily walks when distancing is over.
The simplicity of limitation like a siren, the attraction of peace and quiet bringing me to calm.
I will miss the surprising intimacy of Zooming The Rooms in Brady Bunch squares.
I will always be grateful that shy students, too afraid to speak in class found the security to speak through cameras from within their comfort zones.
I will long for these days when so much was so freely given – free workouts, free yoga, free plays and concerts – so much talent and art bubbling up, we can’t take it all in.
Let’s save our complaints to advocate for the poor who are getting poorer, for the vulnerable at risk of losing their way, for the exploited who can’t stay home one day.
We are getting to know each other better from behind closed doors, seeing each other more clearly from a distance than we could in the crowd.
And there is some beauty in letting go of the illusion we are in charge. I saw a news anchor cry and politicians humbled. Finally, mental health matters.
It is okay not to be okay but the silver lining shines so bright – it would be a shame to miss it.
This is the blog of Kal Spelletich. CONTACT: Spellkal (at) gmail.com + Art, technology, humans and robots, and, well, the journey http://www.kaltek.org/
Gregarious Expressions 