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Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

My G-G-Generaton


When we were young we protested wars with the self-righteous confidence that what we were doing was big and new and important. I remember the fabulous full-to-bursting feeling in my chest as we raised our voices together, chanting for peace, arms linked, marching as one... 

All that music and reefer -- it was heady, sexy stuff. 

We were sure back then, that reason would prevail against madness and that hope could and surely would triumph over despair. We assumed it was simply a matter of intent and that when it was our generation's turn to lead, we'd promptly clean the air and water, feed and house the poor, care for the worlds sick, bring global equality, and end wars forever -- because we wanted to and because it was the right thing to do.  

And now look. Here we are, up to our eyebrows in a turd-stew that we can no longer blame on our parents and grandparents. As humbling, no humiliating as it is, we can't pretend that our generation turned out to be any less self-serving, greedy and corrupt than any other. 
As the words “Targeted Military Strike” shrink my soul down like a weenie in an icy fjord, I crawl off to hide in shame beneath my tie-dye, Indian-print blanket, surrounded by incense, candles and beaded peace signs, hoping that our kids will do way better with the planet than we did. 

xo
Amy

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Monday, August 22, 2011

Mosaic and the Magic of Grout!

Some things that seem like they'd be the opposite of writing -- aren't. Like sleeping, or walking the dog, or sitting around with friends....

Your story can and will follow you there, tug on your sleeve, pretending it has come to buy the next round when really, it just wants to make sure you haven't forgotten it... for even a minute.

But mosaic is different. It uses a tunelessly humming, color / texture / messy / mud-play part of the brain that, at least for me, doesn't welcome words. And just as writing is pristine on the outside (human in chair, fingers tapping keys) while a rat's nest internally, tiling is all dust and sloppy glop and shattered stuff to the eye -- while the inside of the tiler is as sweet as a breeze.

And every step of the process is glorious.
1. Assemble things over time and sort them...
Satisfying already, right? Gathering objects, making little piles of buttons, stones, coins, toys, blue things, shiny things, round things, shells, tiles, bits of colored glass...
2. Smash them with a hammer (the appeal should be obvious.) 
3. Glue them to things. Tra la la. 
4. Smush muddy grout on it. *
5. Wait, but not too long.
6. Wipe away excess grout, revealing colors & shapes as you go -- like digging up buried treasure, or an archeological dig sped way way up.


* Ah Grout!  It takes disparate objects and unites them. Not in philosophy or lip-flapping theory but in reality. It embraces chips and jaggedy bits and cements them into one solid, smooth-faced, indivisible, immensely satisfying THING.
 
And it does so quickly, simply and without words!  If only more aspects of life could be grouted.

xo
Amy