Saturday, June 04, 2016

Music of hair / Music of pain


This boy turned 20, and his sweet cousin Jonah turned 17, and the days turned sunny and warm enough for opening windows and grilling things and pulling weeds in the garden. Isaac is here for another few days before he heads back to live in New York for the summer (and possibly longer--he's taking the coming year off school). We all realized that the last five months marks the longest period he's ever spent away from home, the longest stretch of days that we haven't seen him in the flesh. It's so good to hug this boy and feed him food and have him drive us around town (he's determined to get his license this summer, and he's a good, confident driver).

I'm listening to this Hamilton podcast, an all-Hamilton, every-single-song podcast, and I don't like it very much so far. But I did just realize that it features different groups of people talking about the songs each time. These people...are very white. I don't know. I will report back. In the meantime, here are some people (of color) talking to Lin-Manuel Miranda on one of my favorite podcasts. And here are some people of different races talking about Hamilton on another of my favorite podcasts.


We finally invested in our own screenprinting equipment, and we have a whole shop set up in the basement, and Milo in Maine is printing its own damn shirts! It makes such a well-balanced work day when I can write all morning and print all afternoon: thinking and sitting work // standing and listening to podcasts and moving work. It feels good. And check out this bear.

My life is kind of bursting with other people's heartbreaks right now. Trying to be grateful for and conscious of my lucky lucky life.


WAIT

by Galway Kinnell


Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours.
Haven’t they carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

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