My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons

"When they bombed Hiroshima, the explosion formed a mini supernova, so every living animal, human, or plant that received direct contact with the rays from that sun was instantly turned to ash. And what was left of the city soon followed. The long-lasting damage of nuclear radiation caused an entire city and its population to slowly turn into powder. When I was born, my mom says, I looked around the whole hospital room with a stare that said, 'This? I've done this before.' She says I have old eyes. When my grandpa Genji died, I was only five years old, but I took my mom by the hand and told her, 'Don't worry. He'll come back as a baby.' And yet for someone who's apparently done this already, I still haven't figured anything out yet. My knees still buckle every time I get on a stage. My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.

"But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch, a diary page, the mud flap to a bicycle, so no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets. I keep trying, hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed. My parents named me Sarah, which is a biblical name. In the original story, God told Sarah that she could do something impossible and she laughed because the first Sarah, she didn't know what to do with impossible. And me? Well, neither do I, but I see the impossible every day. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold onto others while things are blowing up around you knowing that while you're speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk. They hear you. They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It's what I strive for. Every time I open my mouth, that impossible connection. …"

"Sarah Kay teaches that listening is the better part of speaking. And that depending on how we do it, finding our voices enlivens us and the world."

The rest of Krista Tippet's interview with poet Sarah Kay, the .mp3 , transcript and links to her poems, including the rest of Hiroshima that I quoted above, are here.

Pictures today from 16 & 17 Sept. 2011.

Mimsy moves

Who knew my new ipad takes movies??

Meet Mimsy

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.


Our newest household member, Mimsy, joined us today after staying for awhile with the neighbors next door. They already have 4 cats so one more wasn't on. She's a dear little stray who we hope has no feline leukemia virus or kittens in the offing. She has yet to meet Potter - one hopes fur won't fly when that happens.


We have a couple weeks - she's in for shots, etc. tomorrow, but can't be spayed until a couple weeks after that.


Soon I'll post a picture where you can see her eyes.

The presence of everything

"Well, when you really listen, when you really keep your mind open and listening to another person — and by the way, I highly recommend that if a person wants to increase their ability to understand another person that they start out listening to nature because you're totally uninvested in the outcome of nature. You can just take it all in, all the expressions. And isn't it wonderful that, when a bird sings, that we do hear it as music? The bird doesn't sing for our benefit. So there's a lot of joy in that listening, and when we become better listeners to nature, we also become better listeners to each other so that, when another person is speaking with you, you don't have to search for what you want them to say. You can, you know, dare to risk what they really are trying to say and, you know, ask them too: Is this really what you're saying? And feel your own emotional response as they talk . . . ."

 If you'd like to listen to the rest of this wonderful interview with Gordon Hempton, acoustic ecologist, including some wonderful recordings of wild places in the world please visit the On Being website. If you listen closely to the background sounds during the interview, you'll hear the call of the loon - so sweetly remembered from Left Foot Lake.

Here comes the sun

Quickly before my student shows up & then I begin tootling in preparation for the concert tonight, I wanted to forward this link to the Solar Dynamics Observatory that I heard about on a recent nova program. Great source for desktop pictures & fascinating work they're doing studying the sun - thousands of years for photons to make their wan from its center to the surface & then begin their journey out into space? Incredible. OK - gotta go!