I am in the process of “fixing breaks” after a recent Word Press update.
Also, I’m changing the copyright status of previous posts to a Creative Commons license of one sort or another. More often than not, I am using the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial -No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Written 12 September 2008, inspired on a very rainy day in the Netherlands. I ventured by foot to the Museum de Wieger from a horse exposition. Upon arrival, a wedding was taking place in the room of the exhibition I came to see – “Taal en telken” by Mariëtte van Erp. Most graciously, though, the manager permitted me to view van Erp’s poetry and visual art between the two ceremonies.
“Two Weddings and a Museum”
Deurne, Netherlands
Lips smack
between paintings
as the Dutch kiss,
swiveling heads
three times.
A ’68 pink Cadillac
awaits to carry
bride and groom
through lowland rain
on a September day,
“vrijdag” – roughly translated
“free day” in English,
my mother tongue
I hear sung
for both ceremonies.
“Dames” and “heren”
exchange vows
as young as
the purple crocus
unseasonably sprung
in strange weather
this early warm fall
interrupted by
untimely mist
and showers,
unwelcomed by
newlyweds
and this museum visitor,
surprising pairs
on a wet fair “dag”.
Post updated: 28 January 2009.
Two Weddings and a Museum by Melissa Dey Hasbrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
To Whom It May Concern:
After reading materials available via the web site The Injustice Must End (TIME) http://4efren.com and recent news articles heavily biased against Efren Paredes Jr., I write this letter with great concern about his unjust incarceration. I fully support and adamantly urge that Mr. Paredes, Jr.’s sentence be commuted. Continue reading
For my dear friend, sun-sign Virgo, I wish you a beautiful day that lasts forever. Thank you for sharing your stories, joy, sorrow. Thank you for gracing me and this world with your words – fantastical and sonorous.
This morning I told a housemate that it’s my friend’s birthday. This friend has stayed in the house since June, and she goes back to the States very soon. The housemate asked, “Does she celebrate birthdays? Not everyone does.” I replied, “For birthdays, I impose my joy on others.”
He laughed, especially since our opposite personalities reflect the glass half-full and half-empty metaphor. Nonetheless, I heard him wish her a happy birthday before he left for work this morning. I heard laughter pass between them, which made me smile.
Days shorten and years quicken for every birthday that arrives. Each one is a time to celebrate our spirit, mind, body, and the path behind, beneath, and before us. Each one is an opportunity for reflection and rejuvenation.
Unfortunately, certain ideologies cast a menacing shadow across aging. Anti-aging products destroy the lessons of wrinkles. Lines of time are earned; they are marks of survival; they honor our bodies with stories.
I don’t deny that aches are pains. But birthdays are memories of birth, an entrance of life unto possibility. These are memories to celebrate.
So today I celebrate my friend, sun-sign Virgo, and praise every physical indication of aging. While these marks are targets of sale by misguided marketers, each mark is beautiful and precious. In them I see your child self, the girl-become-woman who mothers her daughters, the inspired artist who writes her dreams into reality, and the elder you are and are becoming.
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Post updated: 28 January 2009.
Celebration by Melissa Dey Hasbrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
During a decade of painful and regenerative learning, I climbed out of the silence following violence. And in following years, I continue to do so. This silence is the echo after an instruction not to tell, not to speak; following the lie that ours is not a legitimate basis on which to stand. These words and actions are destructive–even violent–and often delivered by people entrusted to build us up. Yet this girl who once raised her hand to silence her mother’s talk about menstruation has learned how to speak, be in this body, and listen to women who’ve broken their silences. Continue reading
The question is, how do we engage our spirituality as a space of the internal rather than as an object harnessed by the external–by institutions like religion and education?
*
A brief FYI:
Last weekend I attended the Brussels Meeting for Quakers, where I learned that the Quaker Council for European Affairs conducts a joint project on the conditions of women in prison. And during my news review today, I found not one but two series from US national media sources about incarceration:
Post updated: 28 January 2009.
Before launching Dey of the Phoenix in April 2008, I authored the blog
which, in a later version, extended authorship to others.
Post updated: 28 January 2009.
From my journal, 8 August 2008:
“What I know… Every day is fragile. Every day counts. There is no such thing as a day that doesn’t matter. We are hope. What we do with possibility is our legacy.”
^
I want to begin a difficult yet basic conversation about spirituality and religion. In part, because of my own journey through institutions (primarily religion, education, and marriage), and what those experiences collectively are teaching me to carve a life in a world entrenched by institutions.
Photo by Margaret (Wilson) Kowalk, 1986. Continue reading
