gratitudes, pablo neruda, zorhan mamdani, anxiety tech, my photographs
yesterday i was grateful for a slice of pizza with holly at pizza phil's...
today i am looking forward to coffee with donna..
this morning i started a practice of looking for and reading something positive before i get to heather cox richardson... the news has been unrelentingly bad and anxiety producing... i turned to the marginalian and found a lovely post on pablo neruda about the beauty and power of words...
Words: Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Language – The Marginalian
When two people meet in a third language, parts of each always remain unmet by the other. When two people meet in the same language, they must learn to mean the same things by the same words in order to meet in truth. And so we must love language in order to love each other well, in order to love our own lives.
Words: Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Language – The Marginalian
What a great language I have, it’s a fine language we inherited from the fierce conquistadors … They strode over the giant cordilleras, over the rugged Americas, hunting for potatoes, sausages, beans, black tobacco, gold, corn, fried eggs, with a voracious appetite not found in the world since then … They swallowed up everything, religions, pyramids, tribes, idolatries just like the ones they brought along in their huge sacks … Wherever they went, they razed the land … But words fell like pebbles out of the boots of the barbarians, out of their beards, their helmets, their horseshoes, luminous words that were left glittering here … our language. We came up losers … We came up winners … They carried off the gold and left us the gold … They carried everything off and left us everything … They left us the words.
Words: Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Language – The Marginalian
We forget this, but it is a truth both uncomfortable and liberating — that there is no wasted experience, that the heartbreaks, the disasters, the plunderings of trust and territory all leave the seeds of something new in their wake.
and so, fortified by morning rituals and this post about the power of words i moved on to confronting the daily shock and awe of heather cox richardson, not that she intends it to be shock and awe... and what do i find but another uplifting testament to the power of words, this time in the form of quotes from the victory speech of zorhan mamdani, mayor elect of nyc...
Mamdani began by lifting up New York City’s working people, noting that “[f]or as long as we can remember,” they “have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands…. And yet,” he said, “over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.”
He thanked “Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.” He assured “every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point” that “this city is your city, and this democracy is yours too.”
He laid that disinformation at the feet of the very wealthy in their quest to divide working Americans to make sure they retain power. “[A]s so often occurred,” he said, “the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour. They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long-broken system.”
Mamdani urged New Yorkers to embrace a “brave new course, rather than fleeing from it.” If they do, he said, “we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.”
for the first morning in a long series of mornings pushing me into darkness, there was light and hope...
i set out for my walk with that same hope and the morning was beautiful... clouds catching the sunrise and blazing orange... warmish (for novemeber) temperature... i felt good... i wound up at kitchen and coffee as i often do... i was early so i edited the photos i had taken and then opened my email... big mistake... i was immediately assaulted by fishing emails that made me wonder if my identity had been stolen... emails thanking me for setting up a monthly payment schedule with them... emails informing me of debt i know i don't have... my anxiety returned... just like that... just with a few emails... it made me want to run as fast as i can away from it back to analog... what have the tech bros done to us?...
pictures from my morning walk...
