An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the end of a pole, which she carried across her neck.  One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.  

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.  But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.  

After 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, the imperfect pot spoke to the woman one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house."  

The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?  That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.  
 
For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table.  Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house. "Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.  You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.  

Since its inception in 1923, the Turkish Republic has policed its writers fiercely. Its penal code, taken from Mussolini’s Italy, puts serious curbs on freedom of expression, but Turkey’s leading writers have never toed the line. The great modernist poet Nazim Hikmet spent much of his adult life in prison and died in exile. The novelist Yashar Kemal, for many decades Turkey’s most famous writer, has been serially harassed and prosecuted. During the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, so many writers, journalists and scholars were imprisoned for their views that a prosecution became a badge of honor: if you had not yet angered the state, then perhaps you hadn’t said anything of importance.  [ Link]

Money is power, more money for the government is more power for the government. More power for the government will allow it to, among many other things, amuse itself by putting its fingers in a million pies, and stop performing its essential functions well, and get dizzily distracted by nonessentials, and muck up everything. Which is more or less where we are.

 

– Peggy Noonan, Columnist
 

The Kansas City Star: An interview with the writer John Banville, whose book The Sea is presently washing me away.

You muse upon the beauty of Banville when you’ve stopped reading him for a moment and are attending to your wounds. You admire his account of a clump of trees as “monkey-brown with a tarry reek,” of a rising sea as “a vast bowl of water bulging like a blister, lead-blue and malignantly agleam.”

I haven’t read the whole interview yet, so I’ll post it here to share, and remind me to finish it – and possibly comment – later.

San Francisco Chronicle: The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.

The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.

Is the planet really dying? If so, why are we letting the middle east, and Bush’s dog and pony show, have all the attention?

Dear Tasha,

It is August 12 again. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since I had to send you on ahead. It’s 5:30pm, and I remember it was just a few minutes before six when I laid down on the floor next to you and took off your collar with its jingly tags for the last time, and watched the veterinarian put you to sleep. I’ve kept your collar on my bedpost ever since.

I remember the blankie they brought for you, and wrapped around your body, was light blue with little ducks.

You loved your cookie jar shaped like a beagle, that barked when we tilted back his head. And how you’d run to it for cookies when I said “big mean barkin’ dog.”

You loved to share popcorn and the crusts of my sandwiches.

I think about you every day, and try to picture where you are. It’s hard. Sometimes I see a brilliant bridge and trees, grass, a pond and a stream to feed it, and angels feeding you. But I think that you are consciousness, relieved of everything that was not Tash. I guess I’ll find out soon enough, so let’s just accept the mystery.

You loved riding in the pickup truck, anywhere, anytime, but you hated it when I opened the door of the garage. Big old noisy, stupid door.

It’s 5:40pm. I knew they were coming any minute now. I prayed they wouldn’t forget to come. They promised. I couldn’t let you face another long dark night of being old and sick. You were slipping away from me, already half way to heaven, and in sight of the Rainbow Bridge.

It wasn’t a bad day. It was long and hard, but we didn’t want it shorter, right? We had a cookie on the grass, and we visited Stella in her special place. Are you together with her now? Is Pepper there, and Betty June and Lady, Winnie, Rock, and Jack? Ralph and Tinker? Little Boots? Is maybe Squeaky squeaking in a tree?

You loved it when I scratched your back or rubbed your tummy. And I remember those times when I got home from work and you had dragged my sweats and running shoes from the bedroom, and left them by the front door so we could go out and play.

It’s 5:45, and I was with you in the living room by the windows. But I don’t remember if I saw the vet’s car come up the drive. Did you know they were coming? I told you, remember? I said it was alright to go, that you’d accomplished your life and been a perfect friend and spent five thousand nights with me, so I was not alone. I told you not to worry about me. It’s alright, find peace, be free.

It’s 5:50pm, and this is when they came. I heard Mom talking to them in the hall, and they came through fast. And they were there, explaining. And you and I were ready, girl. We had fourteen years to be ready for goodbye, and you were brave. I melted, like ice in a high-banked fire. As brave as I could be, I guess.

You loved the wind in your face, out on the bluffs where the wind comes off the ocean fresh and bringing salt and bearing time; time to cross a million waves and tip them white, then make a small dog turn and smile.

I loved those small moments of peace with you, Tasha. Reaching down beside the bed to find you there. Playing tugger with a knotted sock. Coming out from a store and whistling – still far from the truck – to watch your little years pop up behind the window. I always worried, made my shopping quick. Who wouldn’t want to steal a dog like you? But I know that you were a man’s dog, no nonsense, take no guff. You would guard that truck. And if I got out, and someone was walking behind me, you’d bark like a Doberman. “Look out!” I remember the time you chased the neighbor’s German Shepard off. “My yard!” You had a sense of place.

It’s 6:00pm, and you were gone.

Papa’s clock is striking in the other room, and the nights are getting longer now, again.

Love,

your Kyle

[thanks, JV]

I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do.

-Cesar Chavez, farm worker and
activist(1927-1993)

I’m not a vegetarian right now, though I was for several years. I’m on a special diet, and I need to stay on it for a while. But when it’s done I’m going back. A friend once said this to me: “Meat is pretty dead.”

I’ve been thinking about this train, and about writing; I can’t seem to get enough done lately. I used to write a poem – a rough draft – on a 10 minute coffee break. Now I start trying to get geared up for writing after dinner, and it can be midnight before I get a word on the screen. I suspect the people around me wonder at how I waste so much solitude, while I feel I can’t seem to get enough. But then I’m lonely. I reach out to you.

Here’s an excerpt from a book, Reporting, by David Remnick of the New Yorker, from a section on Phillip Roth:

“I live alone, there’s no one else to be responsible for or to, or to spend time with,” Roth said. “My schedule is absolutely my own. Usually, I write all day … If I wake up at two in the morning — this happens rarely but it sometimes happens — and something has dawned on me, I turn on the light and I write in the bedroom. I have these little yellow things all over the place. I read til all hours if I want to. If I get up at five and I can’t sleep and I want to work, I go out and I go to work. So I work, I’m on call. I’m like a doctor and it’s an emergency room. And I’m the emergency.”

I don’t want his life. I just want to understand mine. Which brings me to the train I mentioned earlier. Writing poems when I was younger, more spontaneous maybe, was like a car that travels 10 miles from my town of Carpinteria to Santa Barbara in 10 minutes in a 65 mph zone. Writing the stuff I’m writing these days is like a train, traveling the same 10 miles from a dead stop, with the same speed limit. It’s not getting there in 10 minutes, because for the first mile it’s doing 20, then a mile or two at 30, then 40, 50, and maybe it won’t even get up to 60 mph before it has to start braking to stop in Santa Barbara.

That’s why I need time. It takes so damn long to get up to speed. And maybe if you’re passing me in your Ford Explorer, you could waive. Or honk. I might be asleep at the switch.