ferlinghetti

Found this poem thanks to C&L. I think it's called "Pity the Nation." Pretty straightforward stuff, I guess, and at some level I don't even think this is a very good poem, but on the other hand, here I am, posting it on my blog. Wonder what that's about.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

some new music

I like this song okay (my roommates are going to have me sold on at least some techno by the end of the semester) but what's really cool is the video. Make sure to watch until the lady starts speaking in tongues. It's really cool. The song is "Det snurrar i min skalle" by Familjen.

michigan 38, notre dame 0

That's better.

thank you, jhumpa lahiri

I read this story, "The Third and Final Continent," again just now, in a lull before class, and once again shivered at how true it rings, how beautifully it's written, how closely it strikes me. It feels so intimate to me and I almost get choked up towards the end, all the more so now because I know it so well. Here are the last few sentences:

In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his own way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

I have no words.

you can't talk to a man with a shotgun in his hand

I'm sitting in Angell Hall having just read a few posts from Orcinus and Unsane and I'm feeling infused with energy. Being back at school is great, my apartment is working out wonderfully so far, classes start tomorrow, I found out about a neat-sounding volunteer organization that works with the Latino community in and around Ann Arbor. Plus I'm feeling full of fire, ready to go freaking FIGHT and bring some people to the light, to help someone. Sara at Orcinus has a really good post reprising her trichotomy of authoritarians in the States and I'm getting waves of goosebumps at the thought of engaging the ones here.

abriré la ventana.
abriré la ventana.