Scraps

of a Patchwork

sun,  stones,  cigarette
butts,  ifs,  and 
I’m,  you’re,  we’ll 
work,  play,  be
something,  nothing,  everything
counted,  measured,  weighed
steel,  ore,  lead
now,  forever,  ending
light,  matter,  smoke



* I wrote this while listening to a musical piece called Time, which, by my ear, contains nine distinct parts. Each part evoked different kinds of words, but as I began to choose the right three words for each part, I realized they were bleeding into one another, trying to become something whole.  

Posted at 9:39am and tagged with: one column,.

Beautiful Losers, Leonard Cohen

Posted at 9:03am.

a playlist

for those nights when the moon is shaped like a water droplet, and you’re sitting in a piazza shaped like a seashell, and everything is smeared the color of midnight blue. when all you want is to run around the rim of the piazza saying här! and nu! - you don’t know why, those words are just coming to you - and yet, for some reason, you can’t move. your legs are as stiff as wood, as heavy as lead. this is for those times in life when everything is happening exactly as you expected, so that you wonder if you’ve somehow brought it all into being. or maybe you just knew, deep down. you should always trust your intuition. for it is the most reliable thing on this island earth.   

i.  dropla - youth lagoon  
ii. statutes - alexandre despiat 
iii. ms. - alt-j 
iv. human - daughter
v. dim - james blake
vi. clipped wings - matt costa 
vii. congo - bear moutain 
viii. this island earth - the bryan ferry orchestra
ix. you work days i work nights - water liars
x. ghosts - on and on 
xi. line of fire - junip 
xii. wider sun - jon hopkins
xiii. brennisteinn - sigur rós
xiv. sun’s arising (a koan, an exit) - phosphorescent 

listen   |  download

Posted at 10:21am.

a playlist
for those nights when the moon is shaped like a water droplet, and you’re sitting in a piazza shaped like a seashell, and everything is smeared the color of midnight blue. when all you want is to run around the rim of the piazza saying här! and nu! - you don’t know why, those words are just coming to you - and yet, for some reason, you can’t move. your legs are as stiff as wood, as heavy as lead. this is for those times in life when everything is happening exactly as you expected, so that you wonder if you’ve somehow brought it all into being. or maybe you just knew, deep down. you should always trust your intuition. for it is the most reliable thing on this island earth.   
i.  dropla - youth lagoon  ii. statutes - alexandre despiat iii. ms. - alt-j iv. human - daughterv. dim - james blakevi. clipped wings - matt costa vii. congo - bear moutain viii. this island earth - the bryan ferry orchestraix. you work days i work nights - water liarsx. ghosts - on and on xi. line of fire - junip xii. wider sun - jon hopkinsxiii. brennisteinn - sigur rósxiv. sun’s arising (a koan, an exit) - phosphorescent 

listen   |  download
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook   

Posted at 8:15am.

Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.’

Steam rose up from the ground. It had a purplish hue to it and changed shapes like a cloud that looked like a rhinoceros at first, until its stout horn began to stretch out into a long stem and its whole body morphed into an upside down flower. 

What was that purple steam? A young teenaged boy went over to check it out, stuffing the can of spray paint into his coat pocket, but the red top of the can was peeking out, so he jammed his hand into the pocket to cover it and was careful not to move his hand as he approached the scene. A man and woman were already there. When the boy asked about the steam, they made low grumbling noises that are typical of Swedish people, because Swedish people don’t like to talk unless they really need to. Especially in the wintertime, when snow covers the ground and silence coats the air. When everything is frozen and nothing is moving, not even the tongues of people who feel weighed down by the wool on their bodies. 

What could they’ve said anyway? There was no apparent reason for the steam. No trace of purple on the ground.

The couple remained there for some time as if determined to figure it out, but not the boy. No. He was content to think of it as a small mystery, a manifestation of nature, just like in his video games. There were always cool things like that happening in his video games. Gaseous fumes coming out of nowhere, or a swarm of deadly bugs. You didn’t stand around trying to figure it out. You just accepted it, you reacted, and above all else, you tried to keep your man alive.  

He came to the wall he’d seen yesterday. Onto the gray concrete, someone had drawn a little girl - she didn’t look like a real girl, more like a stencil - and beside her was the sentence, If you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth.

He’d inadvertently mentioned it to his parents the night before while sitting at the dinner table chanting, “I finished my pea soup. I finished my pea soup. I finished my pea soup,” until his papa asked him what the hell he was doing. Rolling his eyes, the boy smugly informed his papa that if you say the same lie enough times, it becomes the truth. 

“No, son, you’re wrong,” his father chuckled. “It becomes politics.”

After spray-painting a red X over the word truth, the boy spelled out politics, red bullets of paint scattering all over his arm. He was holding the can too close to the concrete, but he didn’t know any better. The boy had never done anything like this before. Quickly stuffing the can back into his pocket, he stepped back and back and back, looked left and right. No one was coming from either direction. He stared at the wall for a minute or two admiring his handiwork, his small contribution. But something just wasn’t right. 

Then he knew. He ran back up, shaking the can as he went, and started working on the little girl. He made her taller, much taller, by pulling her legs down, giving her a pair of work boots, pulling her shoulders up, giving her a new face - one with black-rimmed glasses, short hair that parted on the left, a rounded chin, wide nose. And lastly, he scribbled vaguely around her stomach, not too much though, for his papa wasn’t too fat or anything, he just had a little belly fat, that was all. 

Posted at 9:03am and tagged with: two column,.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

(Source: flowers-for-yulia)

Posted at 8:39pm.

I couldn’t live where there were no trees — something vital in me would starve.

Reminds me of something Audre Lorde said: 

“My poetry is not separate from my living, nor is yours. The only way we can teach another person to create poetry is to teach that person how to feel herself or himself. The experience of poetry is intimate, and it is crucial. For that reason, of course, it is often resented or resisted. The pursuit of one’s own poetry is basically a subversive activity, because the pursuit of one’s feelings colors one’s total existence, and we are paid well for refusing to feel ourselves.”

Posted at 12:16pm.

Reminds me of something Audre Lorde said: 
“My poetry is not separate from my living, nor is yours. The only way we can teach another person to create poetry is to teach that person how to feel herself or himself. The experience of poetry is intimate, and it is crucial. For that reason, of course, it is often resented or resisted. The pursuit of one’s own poetry is basically a subversive activity, because the pursuit of one’s feelings colors one’s total existence, and we are paid well for refusing to feel ourselves.”

pink light rising over the snowy hill
go tell it on the mountain
is playing, timidly the
beeswax candles flicker next to me
sometimes i wonder if i don’t spend more
money on these candles than i would
on electricity, but i like the light
they give, it’s soft and flickers
like the sun when it’s rising
or setting and smells
like those waxy weeds in the forest
i don’t know their names
though i should. my best friend
used to point out every plant
and tree we passed on our long walks
especially in the springtime
when vitsippa covered the ground
and the first bright green leaves popped
out of their birch branches. the forest
was finally waking up and my friend
could not contain her salutations
“well if it isn’t the snowdrops
you’ve come at last,” she’d say
“good morning, blue stars
wow, so many of you, good
morning to you all.” and then
when the fritillaria came, oh my, my
my, how she loved fritillaria
if only i’d known
what a gift she was giving me then
i would’ve paid more attention, and guess
what’s playing now
i’ll be home for christmas
no i won’t, actually, i’ll be in france
leaving tomorrow for a month
haven’t started packing, i hate packing
i’d rather sit here listening to the
tap, tap, tap of my keyboard
mingling with the sweet scent of beeswax
our local beekeeper (his name is thomas)
makes these candles by hand
and brings them to the saturday markets
i got six last weekend, and a jar of honey
too, which i used this morning
to make pumpkin rosemary scones. my new favorite
thing is rosemary. my old favorite thing
was sage. i don’t know when
my heart changed, or why
i’m writing this entry
something about the pink light
made me start writing, but now the pink
has turned to orange, it happened
so fast, and in just one hour
it’ll be sinking down
into the snow again
baby, it’s cold outside
yes it is, but it’ll be warm in provence
and hopefully sunny too. how long’s
it been since i stood in the sun -
the real sun, and not this moon-like
bulb we have waning in the bottom
corner of the sky? early this morning
i was out into the forest because
i could not write (the writing
has been going very badly
lately) it always helps to go
into the forest where it’s quiet
and oh yes, it was quiet today, all
i could hear was the snow
squeaking beneath my boots and occasionally
the wind in the trees. winter came
early this year and it will feast
on this country till there’s nothing left
but a landscape of bones
sometimes when i hear the wind
crawling through the trees, i think
it’s licking their bones clean
but then i heard another noise
a thumping sound, getting louder
the further i went into the thicket
of trees where there are no paths
and the snow was to my knees
so that i couldn’t even hear
my footsteps anymore
carol of the bells
no, no bells, no boots, just that thumping
noise, drawing me like a magnet
until it hung right over my head
and i looked up, nearly laughing
because that’s what we always do
isn’t it? whenever we’re curious
about anything, we look up
to the stars, or to god, or
whatever else, but i was looking
at a woodpecker. a tiny blue-
bellied bird clinging to the trunk
of a pine tree, tap tap tap tap tap
a thousands words per minute
as if to say, this is all you do
you writer, just find a good piece
of wood and go and do not
think about it so much, see
i’m not thinking, am i? no no
no no no no no - yeah, well
easy for you to say
[little drummer boy]
this is what you’re made
to do, your whole life
depends on doing this, but me
i can survive without writing
it wouldn’t kill me if…
and then the bird stopped, silence
again out there, my heart sunk
down into my ribs and then
it fell into my stomach
when the woodpecker fluttered away
and i thought oh no, not now
not you too, when it alighted
a nearby birch and started again, tap
tap tap tap tap tap tap tap
echoing for miles and at last
i smiled, i understood
what i would do because
it’s all i know to do
was it faulkner who said
if a story is in you, it has to
come out? well it doesn’t matter
how many times i have to start
over, who knows, maybe someday
i’ll end up with something
as simple as a woodpecker
against the wood, profound
enough to pull me through
a harsh winter landscape
with so very little light and let me see
for myself who i really am
just like christmas
oh i love this song, the first line
goes: “on our way from stockholm
it started to snow,” and
that’s it, now
i’m going to pack

merry christmas, all

Posted at 12:14pm and tagged with: christmas, journal, one column,.

A beautiful poem by Jack Gilbert on the topic of language - both its enormous power and its limitations. What I find most interesting is that Gilbert is using language here, as if no other medium can properly express his thoughts. So even when language is inadequate, is it still the best thing we have?

This is a question I posed a few days ago, receiving very little response except from one person who mentioned the value of action alongside words. Days later, the topic came up again in a conversation where I admitted through gritted teeth that I tend to trust actions over words. It wasn’t easy to admit, being a writer, but perhaps it’s only natural that writers are most wary of words. We spend our days struggling against their deficiencies, their flaws. And yet, for some mysterious reason, we press on, every day, convinced that the right words are there and that they’re important.

I tell about a time in Hungary when domestic abuse was “normal.” For many generations, men had beaten their wives, and the wives accepted it because that’s all they knew. If they ever thought about standing up for themselves, they couldn’t, because they didn’t have the language to do so. They couldn’t say what was wrong, and certainly not why.

When I started learning Hungarian in 2005, the Hungarian language had seven times more words in it than the English language. Seven times more! Was it possible that there weren’t any words to shed some light on the concept of domestic abuse?  It didn’t seem so. My job required me to work daily with women who came in with bruises that were quickly dismissed. It saddened me, deeply. But I was so young at the time and barely understood my own problems, much less anyone else’s. I tried recalling the times when I’d felt mistreated or misunderstood, and how had I dealt with the pain? Something very simple, actually. I’d read. Books were my refuge. They offered me a map of sorts, helping me to see where I was and how to navigate the world around me. 

With the help of a Hungarian friend, I started reading to a small group of women.  Not self-help books, but stories and poems that had never been translated into their language. Stories that finally, for the first time, helped define their pain and gave them the words they needed to stand up to their husbands and say, “Stop. What you’re doing isn’t fair, and it hurts.”

By the time I left Budapest, a public march was being organized against family violence. Not because of my little book club, mind you. There were other, bigger factors at play. But I just have to say that when thousands of women went marching down the Danube River, they were holding signs they’d made themselves. And what was on their signs? Words. Their own words. 

This makes me wonder if language must come first, before any conscious action can be taken.

Perhaps the beginning of justice is naming the injustices. Just as the beginning of healing is naming the disease.  

As far as I know, human beings have always had language. By the time our species evolved, it was already inside of us - noises that rolled off our tongues in all sorts of ways. What shall we call those noises then? Words? Music? Impulses of the body?

My friend says music and then laughs at himself, as if the idea is ridiculous.

But of course there is music in language. Just listen to the birds, or the sheep, or to someone who speaks a different language than you, and you might hear music. 

I tell about the time I was in Tanzania, Africa visiting the home of a little boy we’d met at the village school. When we arrived at his house, we met his younger siblings and learned that both of his parents had died of AIDS. All responsibility for the kids fell into the grandmother’s lap. She greeted us with a smile that overtook her face, then brought some chairs out of her mud hut. “She says she is sorry,” the translator told us. “Because she only has three chairs.” They were more like stools, actually, made of mud and straw, maybe some wood.

We urged the grandmother to sit on one of the stools. She resisted at first, but finally sat down.

“She says she will sit only because she is old and tired,” the translator said, laughing at her joke.

The woman looked sixty, at least. The creases of her face were well defined, they seemed to fold in on one another like currents of the sea. She wore the typical Masai jewelry and a regal purple shawl. Her earlobes stretched down in long, flimsy loops, grazing the top of her shoulders. Where you could really see her age was in her eyes. They weren’t so bright anymore. The whites were tinged with a dusty yellow, but they were big and deep and could’ve held all the knowledge of the world. We found out later that the grandmother was only thirty-one.

When we started talking about her grandson’s education, she became restless. It was obvious that she didn’t like our questions. Her grandson was the eldest child, and in her opinion, he should be learning the practical ways of life, how to care for his brothers and sisters, how to survive. “What can these books teach him that life can’t?” the translator asked on her behalf.

Someone in our group asked the grandmother if she had any wishes for grandson’s future.

The translator seemed uneasy with the question. He uttered a few sentences in her language, but her face wrinkled up in confusion.

“I’m sorry,” he turned to us. “In her language, there is no word for future. I can’t make her understand what it means.”

“What about plans? Or hopes?”

The translator sighed and tried again, using his hands this time too. The grandmother followed his hands, glancing into the far distance where he pointed, but in the end, she gave a shrug.  

Would it have changed anything if their language had accommodated for the word future, or maybe hope? It’s hard to say. But I think this is what Jack Gilbert meant when he wrote, “A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment.”

I wonder what words we’ve lost as our language has evolved. For instance, when we say love, what do we mean? There used to be several different words for love, but now we only have one word. Is that enough? When we find ourself struggling to express what’s in our heart, would it help to have a few more words to choose from?

Possibly. But I’m wary. When it comes to matters of the heart, something tells me that they’ve always been nebulous and will always be nebulous. We reach for metaphors, for comparisons, and the words get it wrong. 

Thankfully, we have art and music, and physical bodies too. There’s so much you can express through your actions. And what about silence? Yes, it speaks as well, sometimes better than anything else. But still, I can’t dismiss language. We yearn for words. The right words. Even if we never speak them aloud, we need to have them within us, a foundation from which to consciously act. Today, perhaps more than ever, we must be able to articulate ourselves. To strip away all the dross of marketing and advertising jargon, the business lingo and social chit-chat, and actually figure out what it is we want to say.

What a gift, language is.

Posted at 11:08pm.

A beautiful poem by Jack Gilbert on the topic of language - both its enormous power and its limitations. What I find most interesting is that Gilbert is using language here, as if no other medium can properly express his thoughts. So even when language is inadequate, is it still the best thing we have?
This is a question I posed a few days ago, receiving very little response except from one person who mentioned the value of action alongside words. Days later, the topic came up again in a conversation where I admitted through gritted teeth that I tend to trust actions over words. It wasn’t easy to admit, being a writer, but perhaps it’s only natural that writers are most wary of words. We spend our days struggling against their deficiencies, their flaws. And yet, for some mysterious reason, we press on, every day, convinced that the right words are there and that they’re important.
I tell about a time in Hungary when domestic abuse was “normal.” For many generations, men had beaten their wives, and the wives accepted it because that’s all they knew. If they ever thought about standing up for themselves, they couldn’t, because they didn’t have the language to do so. They couldn’t say what was wrong, and certainly not why.
When I started learning Hungarian in 2005, the Hungarian language had seven times more words in it than the English language. Seven times more! Was it possible that there weren’t any words to shed some light on the concept of domestic abuse?  It didn’t seem so. My job required me to work daily with women who came in with bruises that were quickly dismissed. It saddened me, deeply. But I was so young at the time and barely understood my own problems, much less anyone else’s. I tried recalling the times when I’d felt mistreated or misunderstood, and how had I dealt with the pain? Something very simple, actually. I’d read. Books were my refuge. They offered me a map of sorts, helping me to see where I was and how to navigate the world around me. 
With the help of a Hungarian friend, I started reading to a small group of women.  Not self-help books, but stories and poems that had never been translated into their language. Stories that finally, for the first time, helped define their pain and gave them the words they needed to stand up to their husbands and say, “Stop. What you’re doing isn’t fair, and it hurts.”
By the time I left Budapest, a public march was being organized against family violence. Not because of my little book club, mind you. There were other, bigger factors at play. But I just have to say that when thousands of women went marching down the Danube River, they were holding signs they’d made themselves. And what was on their signs? Words. Their own words. 
This makes me wonder if language must come first, before any conscious action can be taken.
Perhaps the beginning of justice is naming the injustices. Just as the beginning of healing is naming the disease.  
As far as I know, human beings have always had language. By the time our species evolved, it was already inside of us - noises that rolled off our tongues in all sorts of ways. What shall we call those noises then? Words? Music? Impulses of the body?
My friend says music and then laughs at himself, as if the idea is ridiculous.
But of course there is music in language. Just listen to the birds, or the sheep, or to someone who speaks a different language than you, and you might hear music. 
I tell about the time I was in Tanzania, Africa visiting the home of a little boy we’d met at the village school. When we arrived at his house, we met his younger siblings and learned that both of his parents had died of AIDS. All responsibility for the kids fell into the grandmother’s lap. She greeted us with a smile that overtook her face, then brought some chairs out of her mud hut. “She says she is sorry,” the translator told us. “Because she only has three chairs.” They were more like stools, actually, made of mud and straw, maybe some wood.
We urged the grandmother to sit on one of the stools. She resisted at first, but finally sat down.
“She says she will sit only because she is old and tired,” the translator said, laughing at her joke.
The woman looked sixty, at least. The creases of her face were well defined, they seemed to fold in on one another like currents of the sea. She wore the typical Masai jewelry and a regal purple shawl. Her earlobes stretched down in long, flimsy loops, grazing the top of her shoulders. Where you could really see her age was in her eyes. They weren’t so bright anymore. The whites were tinged with a dusty yellow, but they were big and deep and could’ve held all the knowledge of the world. We found out later that the grandmother was only thirty-one.
When we started talking about her grandson’s education, she became restless. It was obvious that she didn’t like our questions. Her grandson was the eldest child, and in her opinion, he should be learning the practical ways of life, how to care for his brothers and sisters, how to survive. “What can these books teach him that life can’t?” the translator asked on her behalf.
Someone in our group asked the grandmother if she had any wishes for grandson’s future.
The translator seemed uneasy with the question. He uttered a few sentences in her language, but her face wrinkled up in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” he turned to us. “In her language, there is no word for future. I can’t make her understand what it means.”
“What about plans? Or hopes?”
The translator sighed and tried again, using his hands this time too. The grandmother followed his hands, glancing into the far distance where he pointed, but in the end, she gave a shrug.  
Would it have changed anything if their language had accommodated for the word future, or maybe hope? It’s hard to say. But I think this is what Jack Gilbert meant when he wrote, “A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment.”
I wonder what words we’ve lost as our language has evolved. For instance, when we say love, what do we mean? There used to be several different words for love, but now we only have one word. Is that enough? When we find ourself struggling to express what’s in our heart, would it help to have a few more words to choose from?
Possibly. But I’m wary. When it comes to matters of the heart, something tells me that they’ve always been nebulous and will always be nebulous. We reach for metaphors, for comparisons, and the words get it wrong. 
Thankfully, we have art and music, and physical bodies too. There’s so much you can express through your actions. And what about silence? Yes, it speaks as well, sometimes better than anything else. But still, I can’t dismiss language. We yearn for words. The right words. Even if we never speak them aloud, we need to have them within us, a foundation from which to consciously act. Today, perhaps more than ever, we must be able to articulate ourselves. To strip away all the dross of marketing and advertising jargon, the business lingo and social chit-chat, and actually figure out what it is we want to say.
What a gift, language is.

A Chorus of Stones

There are many things we know but we are not supposed to know. Sometimes there is a conspiracy to silence us. But at other times it may be that what we have to tell is something no one wants to know because what we say does not fit into the scheme of things as they are understood to be.

Silence over any subject tends to grow. One thought, one moment multiplies until everything is buried and not speaking is a habit.

A memory over the years takes on an air of unreality, hidden as it is in a private unacknowledged world. And yet it persists. Even undefined it retains a vividness, it nags, and will not disappear. 

No detail that enters the mind, nor the smallest instance of memory, ever really leaves it, and things we had thought forgotten will arise suddenly to consciousness years later, or, undetected, shape the course of our lives. And this is also true of the effect of radiation on the body. The body does not rid itself of radiation, and thus exposure is cumulative. Years and years can pass between the exposure to one X ray and another, but the effects of the first X ray are still in the body, which can take fifteen to thirty years to exhibit damage. And if radiation has damaged a chromosome, the damage may not show up until the next generation or, in cases where the inherited damage itself is genetic, the next generation after that. 

Paul Cooper was twenty-one years old when he was exposed to radiation from the explosion of a nuclear bomb in 1957. It was not until 1976 that he learned he had leukemia. He did two years later at the age of forty-four. William Drechin was nineteen when he witnessed a nuclear explosion at Bikini from the deck of the U.S.S. Ottawa in 1946. Eight years later his wife gave birth to a son with cerebral palsy. And the next year she gave birth to a second son with the same disease. Nine years later the younger son died. And eleven years after that, the oldest died too. 

What at one time one refuses to see never vanishes but returns, again and again, in many forms.

Israel Torres was half buried in a trench by the explosion of a bomb in 1957, and he began to vomit immediately. When he came out of the trench he was still nauseous and his vision was blurred. These symptoms did not go away but instead they worsened. He began to suffer from severe headaches, dizziness and muscle spasms. But his illness was not taken as a warning sign of things to come in the lives of other men who had been exposed. Instead the doctors denied that the radiation to which he had been exposed could have caused any illness.  

For years the connection between coal dust and black lung disease was officially denied. And there are still doctors today who work for insurance compensation companies or the mines who deny that coal dust does damage to the body.

How old is the habit of denial? We keep secrets from ourselves that all along we know. The public was told that old Dresden was bombed to destroy strategic railway lines. There were no railway lines in that part of the city. But it would be years before that story came to the surface.

Nowhere is there a record of all that has happened in human history, except in living consciousness. And does the truth each of us knows die along with us unless we speak it? This we cannot know. Only we know that the consequences of every act continue and cause other consequences until a later generation will accept the circumstances created of these acts as inevitable.

Unless instead this generation tries to unravel the mystery. 

I am beginning to believe that we know everything, that all history, including the history of each family, is part of us, such that, when we hear any secret revealed, a secret about a grandfather, or uncle, or a secret about the battle of Dresden in 1945, our lives are made suddenly clearer to us, as the unnatural heaviness of unspoken truth is dispersed. For perhaps we are like stones; our own history and the history of the world embedded in us, we hold a sorrow deep within and cannot weep until that history is sung.



— From A Chorus of Stones, by Susan Griffin. These quotes are taken from the very first chapter, and they’re only a fraction of the passages I’ve highlighted. This book is blowing me away. It’s like a ball of light in my hands. 

Posted at 2:21pm.

A Chorus of Stones
There are many things we know but we are not supposed to know. Sometimes there is a conspiracy to silence us. But at other times it may be that what we have to tell is something no one wants to know because what we say does not fit into the scheme of things as they are understood to be.
…
Silence over any subject tends to grow. One thought, one moment multiplies until everything is buried and not speaking is a habit.
…
A memory over the years takes on an air of unreality, hidden as it is in a private unacknowledged world. And yet it persists. Even undefined it retains a vividness, it nags, and will not disappear. 
…
No detail that enters the mind, nor the smallest instance of memory, ever really leaves it, and things we had thought forgotten will arise suddenly to consciousness years later, or, undetected, shape the course of our lives. And this is also true of the effect of radiation on the body. The body does not rid itself of radiation, and thus exposure is cumulative. Years and years can pass between the exposure to one X ray and another, but the effects of the first X ray are still in the body, which can take fifteen to thirty years to exhibit damage. And if radiation has damaged a chromosome, the damage may not show up until the next generation or, in cases where the inherited damage itself is genetic, the next generation after that. 
Paul Cooper was twenty-one years old when he was exposed to radiation from the explosion of a nuclear bomb in 1957. It was not until 1976 that he learned he had leukemia. He did two years later at the age of forty-four. William Drechin was nineteen when he witnessed a nuclear explosion at Bikini from the deck of the U.S.S. Ottawa in 1946. Eight years later his wife gave birth to a son with cerebral palsy. And the next year she gave birth to a second son with the same disease. Nine years later the younger son died. And eleven years after that, the oldest died too. 
…
What at one time one refuses to see never vanishes but returns, again and again, in many forms.
…
Israel Torres was half buried in a trench by the explosion of a bomb in 1957, and he began to vomit immediately. When he came out of the trench he was still nauseous and his vision was blurred. These symptoms did not go away but instead they worsened. He began to suffer from severe headaches, dizziness and muscle spasms. But his illness was not taken as a warning sign of things to come in the lives of other men who had been exposed. Instead the doctors denied that the radiation to which he had been exposed could have caused any illness.  
For years the connection between coal dust and black lung disease was officially denied. And there are still doctors today who work for insurance compensation companies or the mines who deny that coal dust does damage to the body.
…
How old is the habit of denial? We keep secrets from ourselves that all along we know. The public was told that old Dresden was bombed to destroy strategic railway lines. There were no railway lines in that part of the city. But it would be years before that story came to the surface.
…
Nowhere is there a record of all that has happened in human history, except in living consciousness. And does the truth each of us knows die along with us unless we speak it? This we cannot know. Only we know that the consequences of every act continue and cause other consequences until a later generation will accept the circumstances created of these acts as inevitable.
Unless instead this generation tries to unravel the mystery. 
…
I am beginning to believe that we know everything, that all history, including the history of each family, is part of us, such that, when we hear any secret revealed, a secret about a grandfather, or uncle, or a secret about the battle of Dresden in 1945, our lives are made suddenly clearer to us, as the unnatural heaviness of unspoken truth is dispersed. For perhaps we are like stones; our own history and the history of the world embedded in us, we hold a sorrow deep within and cannot weep until that history is sung.

 — From A Chorus of Stones, by Susan Griffin. These quotes are taken from the very first chapter, and they’re only a fraction of the passages I’ve highlighted. This book is blowing me away. It’s like a ball of light in my hands.