At some point we’ll wake up scattered to our being
Struggling to know as we circulate what’s real
Nurse says our thoughts reflect the things we’re seeing

Questioning the truth to which we cling
We float in space but rarely constellate each other
At some point we’ll wake up scattered to our being

We seek refuge in the unknown when grieving
I used to wonder who would guide my fate
Nurse says our thoughts reflect the things we’re seeing

Yesterday was a day. The U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the glibly named American Health Care Act, which, if approved by the Senate, would push back the Obama administration’s expansion of Medicaid and weaken protections for people with preexisting conditions, raising costs based on health history. For some healthcare companies, preexisting conditions include pregnancy and domestic violence. 

in the dark present, one of the 7 calls out to us
and speaks of steps forward and an elegant gown
and as the brightness chases the darkness into the past
we see there is no dress

no pomp or circumstance or ceremony
just the being
just the being
just the being
an echoed reminder that every moment is unfolding
with us at centerstage, there is only right now
just the being
just the being
just the being

“…The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?…”

– P.B. Shelley

Kristen Kosmas, spoke to me with a candor that I found deeply endearing. She spoke to me of sadness and shock at what she has seen recently. She spoke of human conflicts, announcements of bombings and escalating violence, impending destruction of habitat, the epidemic of banal assertion of power by state actors. Yet, through it all what was striking, was her intuition of hope and possibility. 

Psychologists have known for a long time that serious trauma, such as that imprinted through violence and in wartime, can create mental and physical illness that can be passed down genetically through generations. But how this happens is still being understood. Just this week new research was released that shows that certain molecules, altered by traumatic stress and in turn causing depression and other effects, are transferred via sperm.

Hope. Is that as important as breath to a child? Is Hope an elastic concept? Is Hope, qualified by reality, just hopeless? How does a child cope with life, when his/her father possesses a 'realistic amount of hope?' 

A series of free-writes after witnessing Heather Kravas’ visions of beauty:

THE BEGINNING

Tic toc.

Tic toc.

Tic toc.

Tic toc.

Tic toc.

Tic           tic           tic           tic           toc          tic           tic           tic

What does a caterpillar made of bodies look like? Knees to floor. Ass to air. Spine to stomach. Head to thigh, forehead to forearm, face to muscle, muscle to mouth, cheek to elbow, ball sack to ball of foot.

When Heather said that much of her aesthetics comes from times when she hung at the concerts and in the gritty punk scene in nineties, she got me fully. There is a lot of irrational romanticism in that, but I don’t need much to connect, if the words and ideas, said and unsaid, are right. 

While looking for a place where I could write about Jessica’s work, the one that would have a European feel to bring me home (something that is more than 100 years old, with wooden walls, brass fixtures, and high ceilings) walking up the hill, and then down the hill, and then up the hill, then down again, on a first evening in which the sun hiding behind Olympics sets in months, I think how blessed I am to be far, far away from wars.