and then our exile

tomorrow i will [inshaAllah] see fayrooq and possibly zachariah for the first time since Stuff Happened. there is this division that has sprung up between us since they passed on, it will be interesting seeing how we will deal with it. i am considering taking a telescope along, that i might find them as they soar. or maybe i will need sunglasses, to shield myself from their light. or maybe i will need to shout very loudly, to holler across the divide. rings of fire.

the earth's last struggle
for light, for life, is dusk:
it is planetary.
- michael debeyer.

i spent two hours with mdebeyer, neruda, rilke. i read neruda as though for the first time, selections from his plain and throbbing verse of politics, love, solitude, and re-read notes from an older time when my german was good enough that i tried my own translations of rilke - but afterward realized guilt: is it not enough that i have carefully constructed the ornate cross, finished burnishing it until it gleams, that i cannot simply try to lift it - but to compound, elaborate? personal action, a tremendously wide positive responsibility, and a heritage of liberal guilt, but now this - incisive awareness of the potential of time. i have more than a week until school starts up again, and in this time poverty could be made history. thus the guilt. if each moment could literally save the world, and each of us could do this, we do not because we...are too comfortable?

the Fall is the work of every individual.

"your understanding is too catholic" - my mother.

reflectonthis.blogs.com.

who wants to go treeplanting this summer?