ONLY KINDNESS MAKES SENSE ANYMORE

 67 of #100daychallenge

Here we are again. Has it been 24 hours already? I do think so. "It was a day much like any other day." (Only a couple of people will get that reference.)

Satan called home his son Donald Rumsfeld. I hope Ol' Nick has McConnell on speed dial. There would be some scion of heinousosity to replace him, but maybe the his successor wouldn't be QUITE so odious in such innumerable ways. 

But Cosby was set free so that is a disgusting downer.

I can't really focus on either one of these events.

I am still skirting some anxiety and low grade depression. It is nothing debilitating, just rather dragging myself around. Janet got a cortisone shot on her shoulder; I went to see the surgeon about my second hernia. Tomorrow, I get the temporary crown replaced. Not even the bliss of needlepoint is really helping right now. 

I am dreading July 4th as I always do. There have been a few explosions and some loud fireworks, enough to startle the kitties but not send them under the bed. Fireworks just went on sale today so the siege will gain in intensity as the days go on and likely last through Labor Day.

The New York Times released a 40-minute documentary about the January 6th insurrection. I watched it and nearly cried. Still a traumatic memory, watching that go down and bringing into sharp and concomitantly painful focus how very fucked and far from any kind of "home" we are in this country. Here's a link if you want to try to see it.

I've been listening to Lawrence Wright"s God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State, and it is, as NPR said, essential reading for everyone.It is by turns maddening, saddening, and generally entertaining. I've never really had much of a hankering to visit places like Houston, Dallas (been there once), or San Antonio, but now I am interested in checking it out, plus I hear they have some good art here and there.

Maybe I am just getting tired and burnt out. I will have some kind of vacation, or time out, in late August when I head up to Oakland for my step-nephew's wedding. I am looking forward to it. I even began a sewing project with my cousin Christina (ace seamstress) to make a dress to wear to one of the events. But it is a long haul until then and I need to shake out of this shallow morass. 

I just went to the kitchen to find my 'phone and get some chocolate ... could help my mood, right? I recalled that for dinner I made sandwiches with some deli turkey that Jimmy gave us out of the food bank he goes to. I had to the give it to the cats as it had the consistency and taste of extruded mucus. Very disgusting. The cats, especially McCoy, were very cool with it, though. Glad to oblige them.

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

— Naomi Shabib Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, The Eighth Mountain Press,1994

KINDNESS

Your kindness is no kindness now;

It is unkindness to allow

My unkind heart so to reveal

The difference that it would conceal.

If I were, as I used to be,

As kind to you as you to me,

Or if I could but teach you how

To be unkind, as I am now,

That would be a kindness of a kind—

To be again of a like mind.

— Catherine Davis, The New Yorker Book of Poems, Viking Press, New York, 1969

THE HAND OF KINDNESS

Well i wove the rope and i picked the spot

Well i struck out my neck and i tightened the knot

O stranger, stranger, i'm near out of time

You stretch out your hand, i stretched out mine

O maybe just the hand of kindness

Maybe just the hand of kindness

Maybe just a hand, stranger

Will you reach me in time in time

Well i scuppered the ship and i bent the rail

Well, i cut the brakes and i ripped the sail

And they called me a jonah, it's a sin i survived

Well, you stretched out your hand, i stretched out mine

Maybe just the handof kindness

Well, maybe just the hand of kindness

O maybe just a hand, stranger

Will you reach me in time in time

O shoot that old horse and break in the new

O the hung are many and the living are few

I see your intention, here's my neck on the line

You stretch out your hand i stretched out mine

Well, maybe just the hand of kindness

O maybe just the hand of kindness

Well, maybe just a hand, stranger

Will you reach me in time in time

O maybe just the hand of kindness

Well, maybe just the hand of kindness

Well, maybe just a hand, stranger

Will you reach me in time in time

— Richard Thompson, Hand of Kindness, Hannibal Records, 1983