born in

this is a really long ballad that is too long to reproduce here, so i will just give you a link for it:
here.

this makes me very happy.

i just got the greatest comment that i ever remember getting. it tops even "you look like someone's grandmother on acid." my brother met a little girl in the park who had a really cool name but i won't write it here. anyway, what she said was: "do you play the guitar? [no] oh, you look like someone who plays the guitar." yay!
also, she said her brother was named junior after martin luther king jr.

something my mom pointed out while we were listening to the weavers.

do you know the song "if i had a hammer"? chances are (if you have one ounce of coolness) you do. well, i was wondering the significance of the hammer and the bell, but i just found out: the hammer represents communism (hammer and sickle), and the bell represents the freedom of america (the liberty bell). so, what the weavers are really saying is-"what we really want is not the totalitarian, corrupt communism of the russians and the chinese, but the fairness of communism AND the freedom of democracy. anyway, i thought that that was pretty nifty.

aha! there she is.

in a previous post, i talked about i hate how when people say, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" they just mean your job. so, i have found exactly what i want to be when i grow up.

i was sitting on the beach, just sort of hanging out, when i caught sight of a woman. she was standing right above that downward slope where the waves start coming in. she was wearing a tie-dyed blue beach cover-up that had a slit for her leg which went all the way up to her waist. she her hair was grayish-white and so short that it clung to her skull like a knit cap. her skin was tan, but it was clear that she hadn't worked to make it that way. she was standing there, doing tai-chi with the wave blowing around her dress and imaginary hair, and i thought-"that's what i want to be when i grow up."

apple

imagine a thunderstorm. a really bad one, with wind and darkness and light and broken cable lines. you suck your teeth in annoyance-you wanted to go shopping today, and the rain is ruining it. so boring. nothing to do but lie around the house. and because of the broken cable lines, you can't even watch tv. ugh.
now go back two thousand years, and imagine that you are hiding in a cave, desperately praying that this one isn't the one that will end the world. you are only 150 moons old, you thinkscream to the god of the sky. not ready to die yet. not yet. your infant old daughter screams. shhhh, you tell her. shhhhh. it's going to be alright-but you don't know that it really is. you don't know that the golden lion will win the battle against the inky snake this time. trees are falling down. the water is moving faster than you have ever seen. it could easily be the end of the world.
weather is currently the only force of nature we have yet to control, but we are the masters of it in that we understand it. we understand the system of evaporation and precipitation, that rain is just a way of purifying water and putting it back where it came from. we understand that hail is frozen water, and not people in the sky throwing stones at us. we are no longer afraid.
what i find amazing about the story of adam and eve is how keenly predicted it is-the fall of simplicity and superstition thru knowledge. notice correct predictions from the story-right now, the thing people most fear is each other. religious leaders are in a frenzy to stir up SOME kind of faith among people, usually ending up looking crazy and violent. and also, people arguably know too much.
here's the funny thing about life-no one has made the rules beforehand, so we have to make them up as we play. the rule that hasn't yet been made up is when we know enough. the prudengnossisseco (word i just invented for the divide between knowledge and wisdom) has not yet been chalked up.
p r u d e n g n o s i s s s e c o

i like that word.