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Passing the Orange

On Halloween night the new teacher gave a party for the parents. She lined up the women on one side of the schoolroom, the men on the other, and they had a race, passing an orange under their chins along each line. The women giggled like girls and dropped their orange before it got halfway, but it was the men's line that we watched. Who would have thought that anyone could get them to do such a thing? Farmers in flannel shirts, in blue overalls and striped overalls. Stout men embracing one another. Our fathers passing the orange, passing the embrace - the kiss of peace - complaining about each other's whiskers, becoming a team, winning the race.

Leo Dangel

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The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

-Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (1920- )

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Fix

The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives Buying what they are told to buy, Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty, Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling* True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex*cheating on each other For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore. Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss As if someone pulled the floor out from under them, They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station *Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want, Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud*

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us, Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness? What the hell is it? America is perplexed. We would fix it if we knew what was broken. Alicia Suskin Ostriker

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The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family 'gets together' alone. -Ashley Montagu, anthropologist and writer (1905-1999)

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Rain

A teacher asked Paul what he would remember from third grade, and he sat a long time before writing "this year sumbody tutched me on the sholder" and turned his paper in. Later she showed it to me as an example of her wasted life. The words he wrote were large as houses in a landscape. He wanted to go inside them and live, he could fill in the windows of "o" and "d" and be safe while outside birds building nests in drainpipes knew nothing of the coming rain.

Naomi Shihab Nye

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You cannot hope to build a better world without improving individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. ~Marie Curie~

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Sabbaths 1998, VI

By expenditure of hope, Intelligence, and work, You think you have it fixed. It is unfixed by rule. Within the darkness, all Is being changed, and you Also will be changed. Now I recall to mind A costly year: Jane Kenyon, Bill Lippert, Philip Sherrard, All in the same spring dead, So much companionship Gone as the river goes. And my good workhorse Nick Dead, who called out to me In his conclusive pain To ask my help. I had No help to give. And flood Covered the cropland twice. By summer's end there are No more perfect leaves. But won't you be ashamed To count the passing year At its mere cost, your debt Inevitably paid? For every year is costly, As you know well. Nothing Is given that is not Taken, and nothing taken That was not first a gift. The gift is balanced by Its total loss, and yet, And yet the light breaks in, Heaven seizing its moments That are at once its own And yours. The day ends And is unending where The summer tanager, Warbler, and vireo Sing as they move among Illuminated leaves.

~ Wendell Berry ~

I've believed ever since that living on the edge, living in and through your fear, is the summit of life, and that people who refuse to take that dare condemn themselves to a life of living death. John H. Johnson (American Businessman, Founder of Johnson Publishing)

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Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XXIX

Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~