Monday, November 1, 2021

Día de los Muertos

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

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With our dear pops passing in late September, 2017, the initial anniversary that following fall of 2018, welcomed a broader map down avenues of acknowledgement. Sumthin to collective consciousness that made Día de los Muertos resonate, resulting in thy blogger's former porch display. One avoided an alter, marigold garland, facial adornment, or other rites of reverence - for all seem earned only by a lineage three thousand years deep. Allusion, then, felt more fitting than any aspect overt. Outta respect for a culture not one's own, I chose a nineteenth century guide.

Engaged one's share of research prior as one questioned if one's H2Omeloncholic ass wasn't 'appropriating' a sacred Mexican ritual. Loving what I learned. José Guadalupe Posada Aguilar (1852–1913) was a lithographer and illustrator of political satirist 'ilk' before the term existed. Coincided ideally with the Mexican Revolution. His work has become so ubiquitous, that the reader is likely unwittingly familiar:

Posada was a fellow cheeky kindred who was bravely intra-critiquing the Mexican bourgeoisie: how they would dress, midday, as a symptom of their classism.

a75b30c2d44d6abebf02a7af415ebc6f--jose-guadalupe-guadalupe-posada.jpg

His ironic use of skeletons, as dapper relics, resonated as symbols for Día de los Muertos - whose observance dates back farther than when colonialism was but a 'twinkle' in Empire's ravaging eye. Tragically misunderstood my missionaries, Hallow's Eve or All Saint's Day seemed the less 'evil' or lesser 'savage' alternative encouraged in the US - preferring honoring Christian saints to the deceased family members of everyday folk - as actually intended. Highly suspicious that the elaborate marigold alters were deemed too democratic: daring the supposition that if one lived and was loved, such a shared existence earned honorable observance. Posada's work resonates too well in the idea or perhaps, audacious inquiry, of who is worthy of ceremony.

What one digs most here is how Posada's politico-art places him as one of the first 'influencers' or 'thought leaders'. "Day of the Dead" existed millennia preceding him. Yet the popularity of his illustrations in leading Mexican publications created iconic imagery that not only was incorporated into Día de los Muertos festivities but seems to have become the de facto visual for its costuming today - in reverent socio-spiritual exercise.

Posada apparently inspired no less than artists like Diego Rivera:

Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, 1946-1947, Diego Rivera

La Calavera Catrina, or "Elegant Skull", is perhaps Posada's most famous reference, with her intentionally ostentatious hat:

Those closer to the holiday's pre-Columbian Mesoamerica origins forgo Posada's millinery 'commentary' to instead weave their hair directly in stunning floral displays. The choices of flower are not random. Each color holds meaning: their wish for the flight of the deceased. Chuckling at Posada's parody of brown peops' middle-class mores 'aspiring' to Euro ideals, literally in procession, down Mexican streets - right alongside these ancient floral intricacies of Indigenous pageantry on November 1 thru November 2. Just gotta appreciate the translation of that nigh absurd tension: how Empire eva looms, daresay 'haunts' - even the esteemed expression of the most intimate remembrance.

Traditionally, favorite foods - of those beloved souls transcended - are offerings in edible memoriam. My sister and I are currently roasting sweet potatoes. Either late parents' taste buds, as well as our pre-Middle Passage ancestral 'root', is thereby well-acknowledged. Like memory and perspective, one dish can invite diverse 'flavor'. My sister's sensorial preference leans more savory while I prefer the sweeter culinary route. Am quite humbled by the extreme fortune of a tree just feet away with the Fuji variety beckoning a picking. Likely later today, I'll sauté slices of these autumnal apples - at their seasonal peak - in ghee and cinnamon, to pour into the steaming split root veggie...with flesh the color of marigolds.

Observe as ye will, my sweets...

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13905629/oakland-adrian-arias-honors-bay-area-artists-at-somarts-and-mission-cultural-center-day-of-the-dead

https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2021/10/28/day-of-the-dead-chicano-artists-los-angeles-commercialization?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=YESDaily_20211101&utm_content=YESDaily_20211101+CID_cf9b41d43758aa9bdb256fc0f05ad9e5&utm_source=CM

a clever as compassionate critique

on the implausibility

of POSTness

Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

Monday, September 27, 2021

not our first rodeo

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

COMMERCIAL COPY

HOUN: Hi there! I'm Calhoun, fourth-generation Texan and a proud board member of this Texas Tourism council. We've been deprived of our liberties - locked up for a while now in these plague times. Liberty-lovers are naturally itching to travel again.

DIRECTOR: Uh, Houn? Let's avoid words like..."liberty". Kinda partisan these days. We want potential visitors to 'feel the warmth'.

HOUN: Good thinking.

DIRECTOR: Maybe? "Thinking."

HOUN: But this here's Texas.

DIRECTOR: Yeah, but...ya don't...you don't twang. Why we chose you for official Tourism Spokesguy. The critical-race folk would hear that accent and say it 'regionalized' you...somehow. Might maybe mark 'class' too. Stick with what they call Standard English. Keep your tonality bland and thereby throw em off our trail. We don't want to alienate Vermont.

HOUN: We don't? But their senator is Sanders.

DIRECTOR: And their tourism dollars are Andrew Jackson. Take two...

HOUN: Hi there! I'm Calhoun, fourth-generation Texan and a proud board member of this Texas Tourism council. Texas welcomes you home. You and the whole family. 'Specially fetuses. Not keen though on the "tired, huddled masses yearning to" seek asylum. Like that half-Caribbean Vice Lady says, "Don't come."

DIRECTOR: Best to leave out any mention there - that half-breed part. Could lose the whole South.

HOUN: You're a sharp one.

DIRECTOR: Take three...

HOUN: Some...will feel right at home here. Cause in Texas? We may make voting hard as hell but when it comes to litigation? Our big sky's the limit! Those Vegas 'spreads' have got nuttin on us. Dig into our Texas-size buffet...of litigation. Oh...I said "nuttin". Should we go back?

DIRECTOR: I think we'll leave it. Felt kind folksy. 'Homespun' shouldn't raise flags. We want a balance to entice. Sounding too stuffy might defeat our purpose. I'll cut/paste. Don't start from the beginning. "Buffet..." Take four...

HOUN: Texas-size buffet...of litigation. Sue women. Sue their doctors. Sue the Lyft driver to their doctors. Sue their confidants who should have sued 'em too...

[DIRECTOR's thumbs up]

HOUN: ...Sued 'em too cause they must've known. Sue CVS cause they foil our strategy by selling those pesky pregnancy tests that might signal those women - with only pitch-perfect cycles - before six weeks. Here in Texas, you can look forward to suing til to your heart's content. You'll sue so much, you won't even notice you've been barred from voting polls.

[DIRECTOR's smile broadens - hand motioning for more]

HOUN: For your next vacation, why go all the way to Commiefornia with their green-slushy Muslim 'fasts'? Oops. That might put off the West Coast.

DIRECTOR: Keep that in too though. Them? We need to discourage. Between their cost of living crisis and all those fires, they're fleeing the Golden State and settling here. Bringing along their dang veganism. Could turn Texas blue or at least purple. Offend away. Take five...

HOUN: Here in the Lone Star State, we like big, meaty appetites. Everything big. Best way to work up a Texas appetite might be what's now called voluntourism: as a vigilante on the border to assist ICE. Or consider our latest sport gaining in popularity over night: slave patrol reenactment. We supply everything: horses, whips, but especially the free-wheeling vestiges of state-sponsored supremacy.

[DIRECTOR sends up passionate 'okay' sign]

Getty

HOUN: Never ends here. In Texas, it's as if time just stops. We make sure to wrangle the hands of the clock. Like when we were the last state to free slaves. Since we do things are own way, they were actually freed already but we just didn't bother to let 'em know. That covers your Juneteenth history - now a more mainstream holiday. Texas is a living museum - good for the kids that way. What goes better with holidays than hospitality? Texas can't wait to show you ours.

DIRECTOR: That's a ~~whip~~ wrap.

a clever as compassionate critique

on the implausibility

of POSTness

Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

Monday, September 6, 2021

Green-Eyed Mainstream

Languaging matters. So. And yet? One - too oft - involuntarily eavesdrops upon a certain phrasing that practically drips off the mainstream tongue:

“He’s so talented; don’t ya just hate him?”

“She has style to spare; we’re so jealous.”

Unfortunately, such alleged ‘compliments’ are generally gender-coded. Attributes outside gender norms are not generally acknowledged, let alone affirmed. One struggles to recall the last time one heard:

“Damn, he sure can knit; don’t we hate his guts?” Grateful for the rarity here. Not quite sure what offense his entrails could commit - between purl one, knit two - to warrant so severe a curse. But hey.

“My Begonia Sweet Pea-s don’t bloom like his; makes ya pea-green with envy, huh?” Once associated with jealousy, a flavor is off. Nonetheless, one’s enjoyment of peas, especially split in soup, is unaffected.

This warped acquiescence to “hate”, within a shut-down shout-out, can be troubling enough. Further, this particular framing - all too common - implicates the listener, sans their permission, in the realm defined as the opposite of ‘love’. “Don’t you hate too?” The speaker assumes that the listener must. Only? Neither social agent hates in this context. Both are not in the grips of something but rather, the grace of it. Admiration.

If one might dare be so brazen as to attempt unpacking the unconscious: “I admire…” is what we actually mean. Is it not? What is admiration if not an admittance that we can be inspired by one another? To admire is to accept the unsolicited offering of being moved, daresay, taken higher. By another. ‘Inspired’ is centered ‘in’ the word, ‘spirit’ - for however that might, respectively, settle with the dear reader’s existential drift. We are all - at every, single moment, without fail - no more nor less than examples for one another. We are three signs interchangeably:

what/how to be
what/how not to be
what/how/when to neutrally observe.

That’s it, really. Why complicate our greatest access to guidance - each other - with this inexplicable refrain? Why pervert inspiration? Our strengths - and execution of those strengths into accomplishments - are gifts that we share. Lights directing. Our weaknesses - and consequences of those weaknesses - are gifts of no less value. Blinking lights warning. Why do we not insist upon languaging that honors this invaluable social transaction? How is jealousy - even in jest - an accolade? For whatever else may fall woefully short of commendation, envy will still trump it.

We need not even look to some austere metaphor for life’s abundance. Las Vegas - where what happens stays - will do. Is life not an infinite Vegas buffet, with the promise to ever replenish opportunity for opportunities? Another’s seeming luck, aspirational trait, or ‘allure’ that draws an aware/evolved camaraderie, et cetera, is not the last sloppy, sinful square of tiramisu at the end of the dessert bar. And hell, what if it is? No amount of awareness that another may possess or evolution that another may traverse- within themselves or in relation - can compare to what we endeavor to attain on our own, in order to solidify the individuality of our original narratives. Infinite, baby! As for the finite? After all, tiramisu, tarte tatin, Waldorf salad, (With candied walnuts, never raw/ never roasted. Waldorf walnuts must be candied. Any home dinner party or paying establishment that does not candy their walnuts in their Waldorf? Well, we hate that, don’t we? Note: one indicts the act, not actor. ’Tis their piteous culinary ineptitude at fault, not them. Plus there ain’t nuttin to emulate here. C’mon, now.) Where were we in our enlightenment exercise? Tiramisu, tarte tatin, Waldorf salad and a multitude of edible ecstasies, upon which one is confident the dear reader can ruminate at will, are all concoctions originally derived from scant leftovers. Ironically enough. Ladyfinger biscuits turned to doorstops? Soak em. Soak em in what? That day-old expresso about to be tossed. Save the cheerleader; save the world? Nah, brah. Since the dawn of time, one thing, and one thing alone, has saved civilizations and planets yet discovered: mascarpone. And charitable speech.

Layer.

Chill.

Serve.

Orgasm.

One can always choose the latter, a crooked high-five, that speaks low, mouthing the heat of hate. It seethes in some corner. And corners are the only legal jurisdiction where seething is allowed. Contrarily, one’s viewpoint can be so much more vast. Free from limiting lingo, we can fully participate as our own inner Patrick Swayze-s, refusing to corner the rhythm of kindness. Aghast to find the best of ourselves anywhere but staged central, we can take our own words by the hand. We can lead our verbiage, train all summer, and try running and leaping - all to catch our ‘baby’ selves at that pivotal moment called ‘rising to the occasion’. Moreover, we can do so being ourselves, taking just who we are and what we have before us - tired biscuits and stale coffee. Granted, the flic musta edited out a tiramisu scene so pray your pardon for any metaphor cross-pollination. The issue, however, remains punctuated. Literally. Italian to English translation of tir·a·mi·su or tirəmēˈso͞o,-ˈmēso͞o/ : “lift me up”.

Would it be that food porn proves the most exploitative of envy but other sensory arousal-s make taste indulgences democratic. Take a certain sartorial appetite. Empty calories just as easily satisfy when balancing on an avante-garde exaggerated square toe. From Milan to London and Paris to New York, we have yet to be introduced to the shoe or bag, dubiously capturing the aesthetic mood ‘of’ that season…not to “covet”. If ever there be a singular descriptor in runway reviews. Less popular is ‘compulsively consume’ or ‘desperately consign’. Perhaps consumption and consignment are too normalized to titillate. Any guilt/shame there seems socially acceptable enough yet somehow above that communal acceptance of closet habits, is an expectation deemed ‘natural’, if not some form of reptilian default. To covet.

What — of purpose — are we promoting thru indulgence of spite and/or envy instead of inviting spoken ingenuity which prioritizes compassion? Can we imagine that utterance into being - statement as a landscape, ‘pea-green with empathy’? Then again? Known color need not apply for ‘utter’ beauty might defy any identifiable shade. Albeit one cannot confirm, one suspects that our coveting mode of conversation only diminishes the full spectrum of inspiration that one might be fortunate to receive. If such be so, why inhibit another’s capacity to lift our own potential? These are uncut gems in the cauldron at the rainbow’s end - precious nuggets angling glimpses, not glares, at human excellence. Languaging patterns permeate our atmosphere as if we are stirring up, salad tossing, conjuring, syllable by syllable, weaving spells throughout the coven that is our culture. Ours. We create it. Is our collective preference for raw digs at some comedic roast?

Candied, thank you. Please.

Waldorf salad, appropriately generous with candied walnuts, yet raisins vs. fresh grapes @ Gluten Free SCD & Veggie

In our e-saturated society, why do we allow our spoken word - our bond - to sour the sweeter intention? Is the confinement of spite or envy preferred to the wonders of altruistic engagement? Brené Brown, PhD, is a pioneer in the academic study of vulnerability. Vulnerability may be associated with emotional risk at too much cost. What would we be risking, though, by messaging minus that tug at black kinks or red pigtail? Are we so uncomfortable with our micro crushes on one another’s earned skill or seemingly innate trait, that on the verbal playground, confused by the butterflies in our belly, we tug hair and run? Could just be gas from experimenting with expired mascarpone.

When one performs this most complicated task - that is existence - with a modicum of aplomb, should we not demand a vocabulary far more worthy? Our feats merit sonnets, not disses of spurned lovers or comic-book archenemies. Let us delight in the rare delicacies at our one, planetary table. Oddly, when eloquence is most required, one rehearses their words, writing multiple drafts, seeking counsel from poets and playwrights. But then? It is not unusual during the esteemed presentation of an award or intimacy of a wedding toast, for the speaker, in black tie, to read their meticulously selected homage: “how jealous” they are personally or “how much we all hate” the honoree. Prestigious aesthetics beguile yet the elegance of an affair may be best captured in how we articulate. What if we resolve to retire the back-handed for open palms? Like tarte tatin, we can ‘flip’ this, ya’ll.

What might shift in choosing the vulnerability of validation for what we, indeed, love? Options as ooey as gooey await - caramelized in praise untainted. May one suggest consideration of phrasing with a certain savior faire? Am usually ardently opposed to dissemination of unsolicited advise but since one does not know what savior faire means, this tip counts not. Just sounds more graceful. Bet one with savior faire says something elevated to the effect:

“Sure wish I could…[fill in impressed verb]…like her; she’s badass.”

The positive nod should include some form of soft profanity because even the elevated need not compromise the naughty.

14 Karat Cracks

I cease to offer condolences for death. Nor do I pour bourbon sauce over bread pudding. In public. I have not done either since 2009, the year that my mother departed this plane - ostensibly for cosmos a smidge more cheeky.

I cannot sign the ‘greeting’ card. Something’s off about that “sympathy” in dramatic cursive font. The way both ‘y’ letters loop around some flower that droops. Flora depressed. Just so. Something like Devil’s Trumpet maybe.

Close-up of yellow ‘Devil’s Trumpet’ flower, hanging down like a bell. — Datura metel(‘Devil’s Trumpet’ flower)Thangaraj Kumaravel, plants.ces.ncsu.edu, CC by 2.0

Sympathy means well yet can wind up tooting its own horn, only further wilting petals. Sympathy may imply at least an aspect of pity. I do not pity the act nor state of grieving. Instead, I honor the bereaved as entering a realm damn near divine. I am too much in awe of grief.

And “sorry for your loss”. That - too - seems politely obligatory at best. I am neither ‘sorry’ nor do I estimate a loved one’s passing as ‘loss’. The pain of/in grief is pristine. Appeasing it is a gesture wasted. I fear perfunctory extensions can only be expressed to the detriment of genuine engagement. When it is never more required. While platitudes are readily dispensed, perhaps that brief window - where our vulnerability matches our imagination - is unwittingly shut. The ‘standards’ are reliable in saving us from ourselves, preventing unintentional slights from the aahkward risks of authenticity. Might benign refrains, though, prune back more bark than necessary? Albeit inadvertently, does sincerity - high polished - endanger the health of empathy?

I avoid the convention. Knowing what I now know. Continuing on. Heeding the gift of grieving for either parent. My father’s transition, in 2017, followed my mother’s exit - nigh quantum condensing those eight years. Given such familiarity, any condolence ‘moratorium’ may sound like a cruel withholding. My stance is the converse of indifference; it is the most compassion that I can muster. I have found no other experience in our existential canon which succinctly introduces one to oneself. With so graceful a blow, in a delivery unnerving as unwavering. There is pure gold in grief. The sting of bourbon to boot. How can we be ‘sorry’ for meeting ourselves in that manner? It is less ‘loss’ than incalculable gain.

I came to this insight upon my knees. Literally. One goes about their days in grief. In grey. In the aftermath that stretches from hours to days to weeks, one endures in infinite demarcations of grey. Fifty shades is supposedly kinky. Surpassing that, grief unveils finer greys of distinction: some lined in silver, others in dark smoke before or after flames. No fires to extinguish. Not exactly. Not when one fancies oneself too enlightened for denial. Which basically translates to the hypocrisy of the lateral promotion to keeping one’s distance. From burning...alive. Distant from the inconceivable, fluctuations seem minor, if not minuscule. For some time, there is no color, no heat nor cold. The palette of mourning is merciless in its delicate streams of grey.

Too cynical for too many tears, my body expresses sadness of its own accord. Tongue loses its taste for bourbon sauce on bread pudding. In public. Shock makes my knees give way. Rarely occurs. Which is why I was stunned to sink to my floor one grey day. Literally. My knees buckled. Down I went. My vertical illusion toppled into truth. I figure the grey had become so numbing that my own bottom fell out beneath me. I quickly ascertained that I could not rise. The weight of grief had rendered me unable to stand. Until an insight emerged.

Still blinking dry grey: “Oh, I think I may ‘get’ it.” And what I deemed that I got? There is no love that can qualify itself sans mourning. None. This precise moment is testimony to the breadth of true love. My grief is directly proportional to the love shared. When one has loved as fiercely as the flawed do and as courageously as the cowardly dare. This is how deeply, I surmised, one human can touch another, how their presence can be ensconced in the nooks and crannies of a conscience. When an intimacy that elaborate is physically severed, time and space collapse in on oneself, propelling one into the bowels of the human experience. “Alright,” I managed to think. For this ‘low’ was indeed right by all account, intrinsically apt, errors correct as Nikki is hip. The thought had not hatched betwixt synapses nor even an epiphany via gut. The closest one may attempt to articulate such awareness is not a feeling or notion - so much - as the clarity of what it means to feel at all. Plunging the depths of grief? How I felt! As never felt. Grief felt eerily alive. That is the dire effect of a beloved’s physical absence. I was astounded by the realization that in my brokenness, because of my brokenness, I had never been more human. Therefore, I had never been more whole. Wholly human. Hence, my broke ass rose.

I do not know how I knew to adopt an immediate reverence for how raw I was then. It struck me as sacred to never have been this close to the bone of being, all nerve endings…beginning. All cracks fourteen karat. Kintsugi or “golden joinery” is the Japanese art of exposing cracks. A broken pitcher or dessert plate is not only glued back together but every crack - or at least the discernible - is deliberately emphasized in kintsukuroi or “golden repair”, traditionally with actual gold sealant. Sunlight thru grey clouds. Sauce buttery on crust bubbling.

Close up of gold paint along the cracks of a bowl as an example of kintsugi. — Kintsugi bowl image permission granted by photographer, director, & editor, Tom Slemmons

The mere claim upon a ‘broken heart’ seems to grant permission to focus on our individual trauma to the exclusion of life all around - still breathing and thereby teaching. That idea had sunk me; it caved in my knees. Once acknowledging the intensity of my immense humanness, I wondered if a heart breaking beckons more from us. Rather than less. Can we center the obvious circumstance of the maddening breaking while allowing the otherwise elusive heart to keep on cracking, encouraging its regal rifts? Like asphalt during an earthquake - a breaking that runs under every house on the block. None ‘escape’ unscathed. Can we invite ourselves to be as broken open as our sanity will bear? Cognizant of fragility - also cracking - all around. Does the focus, then, shift from the crux of our pain to the fact that we are in that very suffering because of a humanity exalted? Humanity by the name of beauty-breaking-wide. Core exposed: that of our rather crooked mutuality, worthy of cringe holistic. Where fragility cannot decipher excitement from devastation. When bourbon is sweet or sour. Whether to devour pudding in private.

My heart had not been broken by my mother’s passing; it was shattered beyond recovery. My heart was better for having been blown to bits. Albeit the pacing was in stages excruciating as exhilarating. Veins running untamed, puzzle-pieced mapping for the flow of primordial drunken goo. My mother’s death birthed emotions brand new and old ones bear stretch marks from having been pushed past reason. Grief is designed to rearrange us thus. The inhabitant of a cocoon does not get her groove back. She is interStella. Restoration is not the business of metamorphosis. Whether buried in ashes of phoenix or lining slime encasing chrysalis, that past heart - a before snapshot of heart - aches from soggy wings yet to form.

My longing for my mother is not typified in the usual milestones - with gratitude for the unique diversion. I dig that I miss her most in the suspension of bourbon sauce for bread pudding. Liquified mettle halts its spill, waiting to fill potholed brioche.

Rum sauce drips from spoon into bread pudding — Bread Pudding with Hot Butter Rum Sauce, image & recipe courtesy of pinchofyum.com

My mother had a wicked sense of humor, naughtier than most suspected - a side to her that the few ingratiated enjoyed to its hilt. She did not make bread pudding; she ordered it, exceeding her delight when appearing on a menu. If properly as decadently served with that demi creamer of bourbon sauce, she was unconsolable in her glee. When her bliss tipped the scales, her humor turned ‘blue’ as balls. Yes, those kind. (That sentence sighs…writ especially for her.) Bread pudding was one thing. Bourbon sauce, though? She would beam beyond measure. Meg Ryan’s faked orgasm in Katz Deli, from When Harry Met Sally, was all but forgotten, an inferior blur, lost in shadows of my mother’s unabashed display.

I abandoned bread pudding eons ago. For survival, I become gluten-free in the early-to-mid-nineties, before the cool kids took to the deprivation for sport. I confess to scant patience for this current incarnation of gluten-excised folk. I regret detecting an obnoxious element amongst some that makes my intestinal rebel fantasize about taking up saltine crackers again. Only this time, to avenge us - we, the calm fringe of the gluten ‘intolerant’ cabal - I would pulverize saltines. To a fine dust. To dust. Then, slap down the stiffest square. Of ravioli unstuffed. After pounding it flatter, I would roll up that pasta, tight, like a dollar bill. To snort lines of pure grade saltine powder off the zaftig abs on the Pillsbury Doughboy. (Another pause…poignantly for her. How else to get a subversive angel her wings?)

I have landed somewhere inadequate. Oh, not the above paragraph. That tried to pay homage to one far more masterful in inappropriate utterance. Her timing alone. With that nonchalant tone once she had lulled your expectation dim - confusing her for some dame prim. The gluten factor is no excuse either as bourbon sauce works wonders on a baked apple. That is not the point. There is simply no mortal upon the planet who can pour bourbon sauce at her level of expertease. My late mother’s bourbon sauce pour was classic burlesque yet original enough to earn retirement. Poor replication of her pour might prove insulting, offending two deities: god of brioche pastry and goddess of burlesque pastie.

I refer more here to my ineptitude when speaking to others along their mourning journeys. I insist, nonetheless, upon speaking, no matter how words - like ashy knees - wobble. Illicit moonshine in lieu of sanctioned refined bourbon, my compassion is potentially combustible: “Grief is such a sacred process. I wish you grace with it.” I tend to stop there. For my nod is no condolence; I bow to grief’s anointing.

Comfort with acquaintance can occasionally lend itself to hazarding a lingering - on the sly: “I wish you gentleness with yourself. I hope you define grief on your terms and believe that not one crumb brushed or nibbled on your path to healing is wrong. I hope you know you are an expert in your emotions. Which honors your beloved.” That phrasing cannot encompass how much I wish to soothe. Let empathy ooze, drown, soak the edges of a sticky square of…left…over…daily bread, defer its fall from Langston’s golden raison while sliding slow into shards of plate - a syrupy sweet - mending rupture.

What I do not share - as such is not mine to assert: “I hope you find peace with grief. Because it never ends. If not ignored but nurtured, it can evolve to a place where you can live and even flourish. Getting past it is futile; it is your new ‘normal’. Old you? Gone. That you was taken with them. The nascent you, though, is the ‘present’ they leave. They left you to encounter.”

Ain’t hardly my place to suggest the rest: “Consider your teeth to free the knot wrapping your ‘present’. Unravel ribbon, biting thru packaging called etiquette. May forks full of broken-parted beauty satisfy. May your own torn pieces inspire you. May you be carried upon these fragments of your former self becoming else. Your scraps, spellbound, might barely stay afloat. As in a bumpy magic carpet ride. On all fours. Welcome the arrival of this uncut jeweled you. If inclined, savor what is jagged as jarring - eschewing smooth assumed too early. May that urn in your palm split. From the force of sauce to spare as you pour forth with erotic flare...how. How much you love."

Monday, July 5, 2021

connect da dots

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

roasted watermelon ~~dots~~ seeds

image credit: www.feminia.in

Gentlesoulfolk? Sometimes the poet knows when to write none and just let charred dots connect dhemselves. In yet another absurdist exercise, oddest only in occurrence au (nappy)naturelle - requiring lil' else than underscore in lieu of actual articulation - the following meditation on misogynoir relies solely upon not even news story as much as its titles.

And direct quotes from 'subject' matter.

* "Natural high testosterone levels" have been side-lining female runners from South Africa, Burundi, Niger, and now, Namibia in 2021's Tokyo games. This particular 'shade' of misogynoir, my good peops, will not be left to the mad(swim)cap mercy of media 'leads' for this absurdist découpage. Their(our) plight is right here, howe'er - all up in the air. *

Now on with dots n' their surreal connections. In a timeline thru a universe not parallel:

NPR Sports, August 8, 2018

'One Must Respect The Game':

French Open Bans Serena Williams' Catsuit

["I've had a lot of problems with my blood ~~dots~~ clots, God I don't know how many I've had in the past 12 months. I've been wearing pants in general a lot when I play so I can keep ~~dots connecting~~ the blood circulation going."]

The Guardian, May, 27, 2021

Naomi Osaka will not speak

to French Open press

due to mental health impact

[Osaka, refusing to engage media, then withdraws from competition, accepting the $15,000 fine:

“I’ve often felt that people have no regard for athletes’ mental health and this rings true whenever I see a press conference or partake in one."]

NY Times, Breaking News, July 2, 2021

Sha’Carri Richardson, an Olympic gold-medal favorite in the 100 meters, apologized for a positive marijuana test. She was suspended for a month.

["...in an interview during the U.S. Olympic trials in Oregon, a state where recreational weed is legal, a reporter informed her that her biological mother had died. Sha’Carri Richardson said to hear the news come from “a complete stranger was triggering".”]

ESPN via AP, July, 2, 2021

(active day in the chronicles of misogynoir)

Swim caps for thick, curly hair

not allowed at Olympics

BBC News, July 5, 2021

Soul Cap:

Afro swimming cap Olympic rejection could be reconsidered after backlash

a clever as compassionate critique

on the implausibility

of POSTness

Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...