Checking in
Plus cassette and two book recs
Hi all — I hope this transition into summertime has been bringing each of you warmth, joy, and ease in the lengthened days. My days have certainly been stretching, without feeling too stretched or spread thin. The time has been full of warm connections, long talks, sitting in meditation, and good hard work. I feel more settled, community-centered, and fulfilled than I have felt in a long time. I am enjoying the pause in creative production and letting my work live a life of its own while I live many brand new / best days, enjoying ceremony and study and daily Zen practice. My intentions are to keep doing what I am doing, to keep on in the direction I’m going in which feels clarifying and simple and nice really. I feel open to what the future has in store for me, and hope in the dark night.
Have you had the chance to listen to my poetry book, Itinerant Songs, on BandCamp yet? Give it a listen and get a copy of the cassette with the fantastic indie literary label Hello America Stereo Cassette here.
Recommending:
In the Roar of the Machine (2022) — Zheng Xiaoqiong
In the Roar of the Machine is a stunning poetry book by Zheng Xiaoqiong, full of iron, grit, industry and injury, gardens, longing, and Chinese labor and domestic migration stories. So glad I spontaneously picked this up at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle.
Some of many favorite excerpts:
“you just want to find a place on the train or in the world
to live, to love, to slowly grow old”
“any clear consciousness is tormented by the narcotic of profit”
“those fields not yet gone, those people, middle-aged
newly landless farmers gather under the trees to remember, the memories not yet faded
the stubbornness that takes root in reinforced concrete,
changes to the paper and TV
modernization, the orchestra of economic indicators, old village farmers
with nothing to do, hoes, plows, wooden rakes hung on brick walls
remembering the past”
“a cool brook plays a thousand-year-old
country melody—it can’t adjust to the Industrial Age
it knows nothing of the hustle and bustle, it retains
an ancient slowness and sorrow, it lies like a sick patient
oily, dark, silted up with the stench of industrial waste”
“you grow tired of a rootless life
but our lives are destined to float through this world
we make restless attempts to settle down
only to return to restlessness”
“in her last life she was a phoenix, reborn as a lion, the steel
is too dark
the isms too many, leaving her shapely body to surrender to
the world, interact with the night
appearing, intersecting, coinciding, and they have identical
faces”
“I felt in my insomnia a silent woman worker”
“life can’t tolerate overly perfect things, it has a dangerous
jealous heart, the beginning is the end, and I’m still longing
for ancient times as I stand at this modern machine”
Clarity & Connection (2021) — Yung Pueblo
18th book finished this year! Slowing down a little and taking my time and filling time with more movement and connection and outdoors time while still honoring my reading practice and goals.
Clarity & Connection had some great stuff and some okay stuff. Overall grateful to have read this — Yung Pueblo is certainly insightful while oftentimes oversimplified and vague. I wanted an easy read and that’s what I got. Also a nice format for sharing little snippets with friends.