Perhaps,
we should all fashion ourselves as
failure
death
and
public speaking —
for, beyond goblins and clowns,
that’s what really
makes us to tremble.
_________
Happy Halloween!
Faith, Health, and Other Musings
May our minds flourish with creation, and may our hands never deny its expression.
Perhaps,
we should all fashion ourselves as
failure
death
and
public speaking —
for, beyond goblins and clowns,
that’s what really
makes us to tremble.
_________
Happy Halloween!
“That’s mine!”
I yell,
as the guard throws another
piece of my flesh
to the hounds.
He laughs,
as their frothy mouths
attack insatiable.
“If you would stop
wandering in here,
we wouldn’t keep doing this.
You know that you may leave
in any moment.”
I respond,
as I always do,
“I will stay a little longer.”
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Long has it been
since the song of birds
or the chorus of winds
or the cadence of my heart
could drown out
the echoes of you.
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With fire and steel
torrents and zeal –
with wind and with ice
with day and with nights –
the moon and her stars
with sighs and with scars –
with earthen quakes
and dusty snowflakes –
with budding petals
and glistening metals –
silent humming
yet strident drumming:
You Are.
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Sure, we’re all holy
(from the neck up)
aren’t we?
__________________
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Lo, but if we exchanged in commerce
with kindness as currency
and commensurate compassion,
then – and only then –
would wealth be something of honor.
__________________
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The raven abandons
the broken branches
of a fallen tree.
Deep within the
sunken forest,
I recall this place
full of life.
Heavier is the burden of death
when you cannot
forget the shades of green.
___________________
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“My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter.”
Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel reveals a world horrifying in its details yet undeniably familiar, like an old plaything abandoned only to be recovered decades later, faintly recognizable, a symbol of a distant place that does not exist in present time. Her Republic of Gilead illuminates realities and potentialities, extrapolating truths of our histories and refashioning them together.
One such actuality is the economy of names that informs, dictates, and prescribes human value, severally and collectively. To name something is to exercise power over it. We name our children because they are “ours.” We name people, pets, places, and every other tangible and intangible substance in a desperate effort to give order to the things within our reach.
When we gift to someone a nickname, we grant them high value in our inner economy. They have been initiated. They have so climbed the ranks as to achieve a new name — one that is specific to this social group and a private praise that cries “I have known you, and I will keep you.”
The contrary occurs when we yoke someone with an insulting or vulgar “nickname.” They become so repulsive, so abject that their identity is no longer introduced by their birth name, but by this newly-given demotion, this social marker that tells the others that this one is below us.
So also with titles, yet with a bolder intensity. Our accomplishments — our arbitrary victories of scholarship or employment — are so highly valued in the economy of names that they precede them. Doctor Smith. Senator Carrey. Attorney Stone.
Offred, by the structure of her name, uncovers immediately the possessive power of names. Her name announces through the economy of names, “I am of Fred. He is my identity now.” And her title is Handmaid, a collective title that translates in the economy to a dispensable product, an object for persons rather than a person herself.
She meditates on her former name as it fosters a pocket of rebellious freedom. A black market in the Gilead economy of names. She still has something that they can’t control, can’t reorder. Yet the Reader never learns her “real” name. Perhaps, because that isn’t her real name. Perhaps, because that person died for Offred to form. Perhaps, because we wouldn’t know the value of her name even if she told us.
If you haven’t read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, you can purchase it here. The piece is earth-shattering, eye-opening, and perspective-changing.
_________________________
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I said she was mine
and he was mine.
They were mine.
And I swallowed them whole,
cherishing the explosive flavor of control.
Then, He came,
and pulled them from my throat.
He told me they were His.
They were all His.
But he didn’t devour them.
What kind of revolution is this?
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When I sigh, heavily, in the morning,
my lungs breathe your name.
As my legs stand,
my joints ache your pain.
While I work and I toil,
my back lifts your blame.
When I sigh, heavily, at dusk,
my lungs breathe your name.
____________________________
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