[somewhere i have never travelled]

"nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."

--ee cummings

Feeling Hopeless?

(Just read your junk mail.)

Dear Nicole,

The next few weeks are going
to be DECISIVE for the
ENTIRE WORLD;

but even more so,
they will be DECISIVE FOR YOU

because FOR YOU this is
going to be a TRUE REVIVAL
and the beginning of a NEW LIFE,
full of joy, happiness, and MONEY!

I have seen it, read now:

http://www.sara-freder.com/code46/index.asp?CClient=990916/63833HN

Adam Schatz: One Heckuva Magician

(I mean...musician.
Or do I?)

My former student just got a write-up in the Gothamist. Check it out: here.
I love this kid.
I once saw him perform in a space opera that made me weep.
Really.

Being in Bodies

Thursday evening, I went to an art opening at the NYU Medical School. A woman named Laura Ferguson who has suffered from scoliosis her entire life has created a gorgeous series of art pieces depicting her body. At thirteen, she went in for surgery to have her thoracic spine fused; she wore a full body cast for almost a year.

I thought of the scoliosis tests endured in grade school. Girls lined up from one end of the gym to the other, we bent over towards our toes, pulled our shirts up to the bottom of the neck, and let a stranger run his fingers the length of us, bone-by-bone to see if we were straight. Imagine the tap on the shoulder, the you need to come with us.

At the exhibit, I met a woman named Nadina LaSpina. She had a wide smile and dark hair and prosthetic legs. She sat straight-spined in the front of the room in her wheel chair. After the exhibit, we chatted, and she handed me a postcard. It was a photograph of her (looking particularly beautiful); in it, she had taken off her legs and attached them to her shoulders. Below the photograph in script was written: I'd rather wear my legs as wings.

There are days after working with students who have limited mobility that I find myself walking in tight circles in the kitchen. I walk and walk as the water brews for tea, amazed at the ability of my feet to move one in front of the other--such expectations of the body, I think, so much we take for granted--and then the tea kettle whistles, and before I know it, I am back in my mind, letting it flap wildly, feathers strewn, flapping and flapping and hardly even making it off the ground.

Wonder

Maybe it's the sunshine,

but I've been filled with such a sense of wonder today.
I'm just in love with everything.
Tiny blooms and soft skin,
mangoes and tea,
and I wanted so badly to depict this wonder...

I dug into Google images to find exactly the thing to express it...

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A
n
d

t
h
i
s

i
s

w
h
a
t

I

f
o
u
n
d:

(Cue the birds; start the drumroll.)

*
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(I suppose it's back to the drawing board.)

Let's Make a Liar out of Eliot

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Such a shame to disgrace the lilacs. And for goodness sake, Thomas Stearns, what's so wrong with memory and desire? Aren't those what turned you to poetry in the first place?

Introducing Jonas Hefner!!!

This morning it felt like Christmas.
"You think Jonas was born?" I asked my love,
like I was five and asking, "You think Santa came?"

"I don't know," he said. "We'll have to go check."

We crept down the stairs and turned around the corner,
got into hotmail, and there: JONAS,
all 8 pounds and 8 ounces of him.
I cried, blubbery, and my love rubbed my back,
as I said something to the tune of...
"A little Hefner. My baby brother's had a little son all his own."
(& Erica's, of course!)
"Look at those toes."

"Yes," my love said. "Toes."

So...welcome to the world, Jonas!
I can't wait to hold you.
(& for you to become a world leader and win the Nobel prize,
cure cancer, climb the highest peak, land on the moon,
travel across time, dominate the spelling bee...)
I already love you, little one.