haiku

Here is a haiku I wrote on the train this morning, remembering a moment of Paraguayan irony:

no water today
the holding tank has a leak
we'll drink Coke instead

This is inspiring me, now, to write a whole essay. Poetry is insanely dense.

how to be...

Here, folks, is some inspiration passed along to me by my new roommate. I haven't read the whole article, but I think it's good advice.

muse

When the Muse comes She doesn't tell you to write;
She says get up for a minute, I've something to show you, stand here.
- M. Goldman

these are the days of miracle and wonder

Lately, I have felt an overwhelming sense of amazement at several little things. Every day there is something that impresses me, however small. I have been reading Annie Dillard and she has a way of appreciating the tiniest, beautiful things and I think it has been rubbing off on me. This is a gift, I want to be sure to remember these moments.

The other day, I watched a boy who was about 6 or 7 years old, lean into the office to check the time on our clock. I realized that it is quite incredible that such a young person can look at the cryptic clock and know how to interpret the placement of those rotating hands. There are so many people in this world to whom a clock would hold no meaning. Many humans sharing the globe with us live in societies where ticking time holds little relevance; others may be our own neighbors, children and adults who simply do not know how to read. The confluence of this child's awareness of time, ability to read and understand numbers conceptually, and his interpretation of our western device which measures seconds and minutes and hours - if one is thinking about it in a certain mindset, this really is a miracle.

hm...

So NYT is all about Bahia these days. This is weird... Weird, I suppose, because I was just there and I know how I felt about it, and they make it sound all tourist-hot-spot, and I'm just "eh".