{delight number one}
En route to a friend's house, I caught the middle of a piece on Performance Today and was so intrigued by it (and amazed that my children, who have recently rebelled against NPR, sat quietly during the drive) that I actually remembered to google it later, even without writing it down. Ha. Turns out it was a recording of poet Matthea Harvey reciting a new work inspired by and interwoven with Philip Glass' String Quartet No. 5, as part of a collaboration with the Miró Quartet at this year's White Pine Festival, which was held two weeks ago.
The poem describes a group of girls imprisoned in a glass factory, who stare out at the world through a wall made of glass hands ("the pine trees in the distance like bonsai in tiny finger terrariums") until they simultaneously conceive the notion to make a glass girl. I was reminded of parenting, how each of us has limits on our existence, how each of us strives to mold our offspring into wonderous creatures, and yet how it is still surprising to us when the way we have created them enables them to transcend our own limits. Ms. Harvey recites, "they don't question that she is alive, walking, gesturing, but no one imagined that she, with her new glass eyes, would be able to see the glass lock and the glass key."
Please give Miró and Matthea a listen (the quartet begins at 21:45 on the first hour of June 29th's Performance Today broadcast). Does it remind you of your own parenting journey? I'm reflecting on how I have done things my parents taught me but that they could not do, and how my own children will go farther than I can - or wish to. I may not go where they go, but will remain, like the girls in the glass factory, forever changed and inspired by my experience with them.
{delight number two}
Intergenerational differences often pop up in the form of race relations. While most of us really do believe in equality under the law and generally living by the Golden Rule, each of us is also a product of our own environment and own time, and social change does often come more awkwardly to one generation than it does to a younger generation born into the time of change, who will never have known what came before. Jay Smooth describes the USofA as in a "new place" between the Promised Land and the injustices of the past. He describes how steps forward can make us feel comfortable making jokes or slinging epithets without stopping to consider how those words affect other people.
Nearly a year ago, JS posted a video titled "How To Tell People They Sound Racist." Notice how he says they sound racist. Not they are racist. Paramount to his how-to: separating the "what they did" from "what they are". Good to remember while addressing your friend who feels comfortable sharing with you that they hope "those people" don't move to their neighborhood, or your granny who persists in specifying the race of every person of color featured in her stories. You can bat away their responsibility-dodging protestations that they're not a racist by letting them know, as JS says: "I don't care what you are; I care about what you did."
Worth mentioning that Smooth's style reminds me of ZeFrank...who I now see is both quoted and linked in the sidebar.
{delight number three}
Oh, double-header here. Being reminded of ZeFrank sent me back to his site, which brought me to Hard Times::Hole and My Milk Toof. Everybody say awwwwwww!
What's delighting you?
