[A museum’s 3D representation of Wilder Penfield’s so-called “cortical homunculus” depicting the relative importance of various senses, as measured by the percentage of our brains devoted to them. Photo by Robep on Flickr; click for original.]
From whiskey river:
Burning the Old Year
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
(Naomi Shihab Nye [source])
…and:
Looking Around, Believing
How strange that we can begin at any time.
With two feet we get down the street.
With a hand we undo the rose.
With an eye we lift up the peach tree
And hold it up to the wind — white blossoms
At our feet. Like today. I started
In the yard with my daughter,
With my wife poking at a potted geranium,
And now I am walking down the street,
Amazed that the sun is only so high,
Just over the roof, and a child
Is singing through a rolled newspaper
And a terrier is leaping like a flea
And at the bakery I pass, a palm,
Like a suctioning starfish, is pressed
To the window. We’re keeping busy —
This way, that way, we’re making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees.
(Gary Soto [source])
…and (what the heck, the river was on a roll this week):
Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
(Miranda July, from “The Shared Patio” [source])
