Pirahas hum, sing, whistle, yell, and speak their language. Oh yes, the men whistle conversation when they hunt in the jungle. Go ahead gentlemen, whistle the words to a Robert Frost poem.
And for grammar snobs — no past or future tense, no recursion; that is, no relative clauses, ever. You will not find a phrase within a phrase. Sorry, Chomsky, nope. Now, concerning the words for Enemy and Friend.
Picture it. Slung over my left shoulder was my big purse, an open tote bag with dog blankets, a few forgotten food items, and in my left hand a hanger holding a tablecloth. Dog leash, my house key, and a coffee mug in my right hand. Ready to leave the apartment, I was. But . . .
Friday, July 12, 2019, in near perfect mid-morning cruising conditions. True. The weather was perfect, but. . .
“Oh,” I said, when I came across the shell, “Sorry.” But why be sorry for a vicious predator?
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”
someday, this compared-to-us giant will burn down its hydrogen, convert to using its short source of helium, expand enough to consume Mercury, Venus, and Earth, then, having made a mess of life as we know it, Ka-boom!
At some point necessary to earth’s rotating rules, while the side I live on remained a few hours short of light, I should have been sleeping. I wasn’t.
It’s a celebration day—this June 7th.
It’s a cold day, however.
Oh, not weather cold but rather, my husband and I each have one—a cold, that is. One of those shared things. His arrived several days ago and only yesterday did it jump the barrier of resistance and land in my throat.
Our window was lifted, not flung. So, before approaching the Thought that drew me from the bed an hour earlier than usual, I’m following a distraction: an image. A window. Flung.
Normally, swear words are rare between us. As Dave ran the distance, his ever alert wife leaned from the sofa, opened the rear starboard salon window, reached to the narrow deck walkway where the tank filling hole is, and pulled the spewing hose free.
Look, I’m not complaining (spin), it’s just that since we moved to this small apartment and I rid myself of probably half my books, there are occasions when—like this morning—I need a particular book
Arketa’s story is like no other. Hers was a privileged childhood, as privilege goes in a place without phones, power, plumbing, or peace. Her grandfathers were chiefs, her parents, London educated professionals, her training as a midwife was a coveted honor, and her husband, traditionally and admirably selected. But privilege gave way.
~ ~ ~
It was not enough that five men swinging knives in God’s name decapitated her young husband. They raped Arketa—there, on the floor where Joseph’s headless body lay twitching. March 1984—the month of their first anniversary, her twentieth birthday, the third month of their son’s life, and the first of many proofs that her privileged life had ended.
How does she feel, the mother of Jesus, the woman “favored of God;” she who was promised to be blessed among women. Really? Shall we imagine ourselves a matter of only hours after our child’s torture and death? How does she feel?
Many of us,
perhaps most of us,
know how hard it is, waking “toward the dawn,”
after some heartbreaking event.
This v-e-r-y long blog entry is accompanied by a picture of an Easter egg, one of many mysteriously appearing in crannies and corridors of our apartment complex. Of Easter they are, of pagan origins they are, ancient symbols of rebirth, but few among us who enjoy Easter eggs, think about that. Yet some of us do. I do.
I’m convinced that the beginnings of Stuff, surely the beginning Big Bang, did not evolve. Consider the demands of exactitude required when, about 13.8 billion years ago Matter, at some infinitesimal point somewhere in—in what, space? What space?—began explosively, expansively, becoming Universe; began becoming all that we puny inhabitants of one of its innumerable objects seem to think it is: a center-less, bending, rule-abiding, complex Thing. Nothing located in Nowhere began Something about 13.8 billion years ago.
