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Abril 26, 2006
The issue is abstraction...
WB: The issue is abstraction. The nature of things is that you can't properly
value something on abstract terms. Every parcel of land in the country is a
particular place, and you can't love it or care for it or use it properly in
the abstract. To reduce it to money value obscures its existence as a
particular good. And when you reduce human beings to an abstraction like
"labor" or a "labor force," you obscure the whole issue of their community
membership and their involvement in a particular economy and their particular
worth as individual people, individual creatures--that's what I was saying in
that essay. I'm against referring to people as "human resources" because it
reduces them to abstract counters like dollar bills. I am insisting that you
must not regard your community members as a labor force that is subject to
being moved about at the whim of the economy. You must not accept the breakup
of community relationships or homes as a normal cost of production. Communities
shouldn't give up their members so easily.
From a web interview with Wendell Berry
Posted by sarita at 10:23 AM
Abril 22, 2006
untitled
Once, I knew a fine song,
-- It is true, believe me --
It was all of birds,
And I held them in a basket;
When I opened the wicket,
Heavens! They all flew away.
I cried, "Come back, little thoughts!"
But they only laughed.
They flew on
Until they were as sand
Thrown between me and the sky.
Stephen Crane
Posted by sarita at 6:17 PM
Sloth
If you're one of seven
Downfalls, up in your kingdom
Of mulberry leaves, there are men
Betting you aren't worth a bullet
That your skin won't tan into a good
Wallet. As if drugged in the womb
& limboed in a honeyed languor,
By the time you open your eyes
A thousand species have lived
& died. Born on a Sunday
Morning, with old-world algae
In your long hair, a goodness
Disguised your two-toed claws
Bright as flensing knives. In this
Upside-down haven, you're reincarnated
As a fallen angel trying to go home.
Yusef Komunyaka, from Seven Deadly Sins
Posted by sarita at 4:49 PM
Abril 21, 2006
The Waking
I strolled across
An open field;
The sun was out;
Heat was happy.
This way! This way!
The wren's throat shimmered,
Either to other,
The blossoms sang.
The stones sang,
The little ones did,
And flowers jumped
Like small goats.
A ragged fringe
Of daisies waved;
I wasn't alone
In a grove of apples.
Far in the wood
A nestling sighed;
The dew loosened
Its morning smells.
I came where the river
Ran over stones:
My ears knew
An early joy.
And all the waters
Of all the streams
Sang in my veins
That summer day.
Theodore Roethke
Posted by sarita at 10:22 AM
Abril 3, 2006
Some Dreams
some dreams hang in the air
like smoke. some dreams
get all in your clothes and
be wearing them more than you do and
you be half the time trying to
hold them and half the time
trying to wave them away.
their smell be all over you and
they get to your eyes and
you cry. the fire be gone
and the wood but some dreams
hang in the air like smoke
touching everything.
Lucille Clifton
Posted by sarita at 11:58 AM
I had been my whole life a bell...
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Posted by sarita at 11:57 AM
Late Hours
On summer nights the world
moves within earshot
on the interstate with its swish
and growl, an occasional siren
that sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still nights,
voices float into our bedroom,
lunar and fragmented,
as if the sky had let them go
long before our birth.
In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov,
nearly weeping for his world.
What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives.
Lisel Mueller
Posted by sarita at 11:48 AM