"She fills her time. In schools, playgrounds, other people's beds. In pursuit of knowledge, grubs, and, she thinks, life. Her loss remains hidden--over time a fine thick moss covers her skin. She does not speak of it. She does not speak of it. She does not gather branches to braid into a nest. She moves. Emigrated, lone travel, the zoologist would have recorded. Time passes. The longing for tribe surfaces--unmistakable. To create if not to find. She cannot shake it off. She remembers the jungle. The contours of wildness. The skills are deep within her. Buried so long, she fears they may have atrophied. Distant treks with her dark-pelted mother. With a solid urgency they may emerge but she must also give herself to the struggle. She belongs in these hills. And she knows this choice is irrevocable and she will never be the same.
She is the the woman who has reclaimed her grandmother's land.
She is white. Black. Female. Lover. Beloved. Daughter. Traveler. Friend. scholar. Terrorist. Farmer."

"To see that all in the school memorized the 'Daffodils' poem of William Wordsworth, 'spoken with as little accent as possible; here as elsewhere, the use of pidgin is to be severely discouraged.' The manual also contained a pullout drawing of a daffodil, which the pupils were 'encouraged to examine' as they recited the verse. . . . Probably there were a million children who could recite 'Daffodils,' and a million who had never actually seen the flower, only the drawing, and so did not know why the poet had been stunned."

sometimes you start a new blog and then move, and don't have internet at your new place.
let's try picking this back up in january.

"In Egypt Ray and Theodora live together publicly as male companions, while indulging secretly in a passionate sexual relationship. Their idyll is brought to a violent end when the two visit an all-male entertainment featuring an erotic dancer, 'a youth of about seventeen' whose 'supple and exquisitely symmetrical form' creates in the audience an 'excitement delirious, intoxicated' (237-8). Inflamed by the performance, Ray kisses Theodora on the lips and her true sex is discovered. The two are threatened with death, but buy their lives by agreeing that Theodora will be passed over to a group of Egyptians for seven days, to be used by them as they wish. She returns from the ordeal broken in spirit, and with her beauty hideously disfigured. Despite Ray's assurances of his continuing devotion, and his attempts to nurse her back to health, she finally kills herself."
- Gail Cunningham's summary of Victoria Cross's 1903 novel, Six Chapters of a Man's Life, as published in her introduction to Anna Lombard.

i gotta read this book. can you imagine how shocking that would've been to read in 1903?

"But I am free! I'm soaring, soaring. It's like dancing, like singing, this flight. Through and through the clouds until even they dry up and burn away with the heat of my passing. I fly even faster, to make more heat. I will have no more dampness about me, no more water, no more salt tears or piss or blood; no more flesh. The dry warmth that gathers about me is all I will have from now on. I soar on, fleeing the world I have failed."

"Ainsi, ces oiseaux n'ont pas peur d'être invisibles ni d'être visibles. Même s'ils sont nés dans des ruines ou ont grandi dans des poubelles, ils n'ont pas honte d'eux-mêmes. Ils ne méprisent jamais leur sort. Ils n'ont pas le temps de mépriser quoi que ce soit, parce que leur vie est courte. Ils plongent dans des lumières déroutantes. Ils ont le courage de s'exposer au soleil. Ils se croient beaux comme toutes les autres créatures. Et ils font confiance à bien des choses, y compris la sagesse des humains. Ils s'envolent vers un avenir inconnu, les ailes chargées des poussières du temps et la tête pleine de chansons éternelles."

"She is you; the very pores of your breath. Without her, this city, this country, would be a barren place of exile. And, as you walk further into the maze of this city, these grey walls and floors of concrete and steel and stone, you know that without her, the labyrinth would eventually turn you into stone, for modern cities are the new man-made deserts in which man traps himself and bleeds himself of all his rich warm fertile humanity and goodness.

Loving her and knowing to the frightened quick of your bones that you can now lose her, has made you fearfully aware for the first time of the impermanence of all things and the finality of life: that even love -- the most precious feeling we can have for another -- can die or be destroyed. But you have no choice. You are committed totally, for love commits one totally to life and to death."