DAILY Sometimes we see our life not by how close we are to it, in it…as it were, but by moving away from the center, as in taking a vacation, or being sick, perhaps even entering the oh so foreign territory of being on our dying journey. Sometimes just the change in language reveals us to ourselves differently via uncomfortable syntax, weird rhythms and verbal structures, or the vegetation, food, and them ‘ferreign ones’ reveal our facets through unconscious, mysterious light. If we are not ‘this’ –are we ‘that’? In the absence of titles, homes, and friendly connections, what persona emerges? What happens to our sentimental, deeply personal ‘me’ when leaving the large land mass of the US of A, or are thrust into the misbegotten jungle of a hospital? The rich, imperialist voice that is an echo of every American passport, like it or not, has some bearing on how we view the world, and it sees us. When en vacance, or leaving our known body in some way, we are offered a different light, and if only because we are further away from blind observations of idiosyncratic, quotidian patterns our eyes open wider. Light seems to illuminate the small more easily than the large. Or perhaps the inconsequential becomes more notable, our cocooned lives more vibrant, simply through any change in light….we shine and shadow differently. Some of the difficulty in seeing our big, sassy, American lives is to not become judgmental, for then all chance of really observing via a new moral moonlight disappears. Seeing only our loud faults of greed and assumptive imperialism do not let us change from being only that. If we are not ‘that’ then what do we offer? Are we ‘this?’ How do we take more than smothered ashes of our grandiosity to… Read more »
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