Ms Green didn’t believe her mind
was a dark room full of poisons—
a room cluttered with rags
pills, torn tinsel, perfume
in lavender glass. She got stuck sometimes
inside her mind like a bit of lint
caught in a web meant for a fly…
But today Ms Green learned to reach inside
and touch her own mind, lightly—
her mind more like
a stalled record player playing
one song in deep-grooved vinyl—
today she learned to pick up the needle
and move it a little to the right—
~ Amanda Beth Peery, from “A Poem About Anxiety”
Notes:
- Photograph by Paul Brumit with Sony Turntable
- Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
I need to move the needle….
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So me too!
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Could read and reread.
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Me too!
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even the tiniest movement begins to make the difference
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Exactly. And that’s the punch line.
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dark and deep – contrary to the French sky: (over) bright and hot and sunny and endless – but nothing light about it….
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Light! Light!
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“a dark room full of poisons—
a room cluttered with rags”
Yoiks! Well, that’s why I meditate…need the bathing of light to clear away all the idle, ultimately unimportant blah blah bleah. [this program keeps correcting my word, “bleah.”]
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Laughing. I get it!
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Amanda Beth Peery, has an interesting intellect, in the way she weaves her words.., she illustrates how Ms. Green makes a movement, akin to applying graphite to a stiff chamber of a keyed padlock, loosening becoming free within…Ms Green in her movement, out of the stuck grove, lifted, then clicked, toward awaking….each journey starts with a step forward.
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Yes, exactly, well stated Christie.
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Amanda Beth Perry is a Harvard educated, young woman. She has rec’d awards for her poetry and is currently working as an Assistant Editor at Princeton University Press. IMHO she has a bright future.
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She sure does!
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I loved this. The pictures she painted is too grey, hate to be there!
But yes, it’s as fine as a needle and it is in our hands.
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Just a slight turn of the screw, just a wee bit and the perspective is all fresh!
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Remember your post about August being like the top of a ferris wheel? My needle is right there right now, highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses on its turning! Waiting for September so my needle can touch the Vinyl.
https://davidkanigan.com/2015/08/04/the-first-week-of-august/
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How you do that. Wow.
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“Late August —
This is the plum season, the nights
blue and distended, the moon
hazed, this is the season of peaches
with their lush lobed bulbs
that glow in the dusk, apples
that drop and rot
sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands
No more the shrill voices
that cried Need Need
from the cold pond, bladed
and urgent as new grass
Now it is the crickets
that say Ripe Ripe
slurred in the darkness, while the plums
dripping on the lawn outside
our window, burst
with a sound like thick syrup
muffled and slow
The air is still
warm, flesh moves over
flesh, there is no
hurry”
— Margaret Atwood, Late August
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“Bored ducks fly awkwardly from spot to spot for no apparent reason. Only swifts and swallows still refuse to yield, they circle through the warm air at great speed, as if wishing to demonstrate to lazier creatures that life goes on just the same. Grain stands, patiently waiting for combines in fields just outside of town, summer’s great quiet commences. The quiet of heavy August days, when nature, like a plump Turkish lady in the sultan’s harem, lies on a sofa (an ottoman) and sighs, remembering her youth. Yellow fields, ripe. Sometimes a violent storm approaches, the wind lifts the sand from country paths and hurls it against the gardens’ stone walls. The boredom of summer. Of satiety.”
~ Adam Zagajewski, Slight Exaggeration, source; dk-thrive
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Ok. Now I’m embarrassed.
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🤭
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Sawsan, thank you for reminding us of some of the fantastic poetry DK has shared. Makes me realize how much I love these visceral passages…they’re like cold lemonade on a hot summer day…so satisfying!
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She is something!
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Cold lemonade on a hot summer day 🙂
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She creates such arresting images…
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She really does.
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Oh. This. So much better than driving in the rain to disconnect at a church I’m not sure about. This. I need more of this poet-sister.
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Good Sandy. Good.
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Reblogged this on renplus.
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