beauty anywhere

i sat at the back in church this morning.
there was a little girl who sat in the pew in front of me.
little girl of about two and a half feet tall.
pink dress with matching pink and white shoes.
pitch black curly hair that curled around her ears.
eyelashes that curl upwards adorned her smiling black blue eyes.

such a happy kid.
smiling and laughing to herself.
i wasn't so sure what she found so amazing in that place.
but we can only guess what a child perceives.
aunties around her turned and smiled.
nobody was disturbed by her pleasant noise.
she could have reminded them of their own childhood.
times when they wore pretty dresses and shoes.
when they laughed when no one did.
when they made others smile.

her mother kept looking round to see what she was up to.
she hushed her when her laughs went over the acceptable decibel limit.

poets unite!

i attended a performance poetry workshop. it was truly the best 8 hours i have ever spent on anything. it was jointly organised by the British Council and Project OMG. the workshop was conducted by UK poet Malika Booker, a funky little goddess with Caribbean descent. she is a very animated character who took her job very seriously. her spirit and energy somehow reminded me of Antares. i suddenly missed Uncle Ant.

i really did not know what to expect from the workshop and in the first half hour or so i was really intimidated. the workshop was attended mostly by people who had had experience in writing and performance arts. some even had extensive writing credits. most of what i write end up in the wastepaper basket. eeep.

performance poetry, as i learned, is slightly different than poetry on print. the first part of the workshop focused on how to analyse poetry by dissecting poems according to its structure (e.g. the memory, the moment, the epiphany, etc.). then we were given the chance to free-write, where Malika played us some inspirational music and told us, "I wanna see your pen move and never stop until i say so!". so when the music played, we just wrote down anything that occupied our minds at that moment. things like grammar, spelling and relevance did not have to matter. after that we were told to pick out thoughts and ideas and to identify the memory, the moment, the epiphany, etc. then we proceeded to pen all that down into a crafted poem.

the next part of the workshop revolved around how to perform the poems we wrote. now, when it comes to performance poetry, there are other elements that are involved in a poem's presentation. it is no longer printed on paper. it has to be delivered on stage with voice, intonation, motion, etc. that is why it is not just a recital, but a performance. Malika actually turned us all into performers within just a couple of hours. she knew exactly what she was doing.

it was the first time i had ever presented my writing. my feet turned into jello and i was holding on to the mic stand to keep from collapsing. as i read my words, i could feel their eyes fixated on me. and when i finished i actually received an applause. whoo!

it was truly a good start to my weekend. intensely productive.

i had my Goddess to thank for a day well spent.

perfectly natural. undeniably inevitable.

"The emergence of AIDS, Ebola and any number of other rain-forest agents (viruses) appears to be a natural consequence of the ruin of the tropical biosphere.

The emerging viruses are surfacing from ecologically damaged parts of the earth. Many of them come from the tattered edges of tropical rain forest, or they come from tropical savanna that is being settled rapidly by people. The tropical rain forests are the deep reservoirs of life on the planet, containing most of the world's plant and animal species. The rain forests are also its largest reservoirs of viruses, since all living things carry viruses. When they come out of an ecosystem, they tend to spread in waves through the human population, like echoes from the dying biosphere.

In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot outs in Europe, Japan, and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions. Perhaps the biosphere does not 'like' the idea of five million humans. Or it could also be said that the extreme amplification of the human race, which has occured in the past hundred years or so, has suddenly produced a very large quantity of meat, which is sitting everywhere in the biosphere and may not be able to defend itself against a life form that might want to consume it.

Nature has interesting ways of balancing itself. The rain forest has its own defences. The earth's immune system, so to speak, is seeing the presence of the human species and is starting to kick in. The earth is attempting to rid itself of an infection by the human parasite. Perhaps AIDS is the first step in a natural process of clearance.

I begin to wonder, with a sense of foreboding, if AIDS might not be the end but only the beginning. I suspect that AIDS is not an accident or an isolated occurence but a step in a natural process that does not look friendly to my species, and that AIDS might not be Nature's pre-eminent display of power. Whether the human race can actually maintain a population of five million or more without a crash with a hot virus remains an open question. Unanswered. The answer lies hidden in the labyrinth of tropical ecosystems. AIDS is the revenge of the rain forest. It is only the first act of the revenge."

taken from "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston

wishful thinking

charges.
declines.
withdrawals.
and fucking procedures.

my job?
wishful thinking.

and that's how it works

i found this in my wastepaper basket as i walked in this morn:

the intertwining threads of thought
amplified by words
and made real by deed...

gives birth to reality.

don't you think?

furry black handcuffs

it is the hunger.
and the need to feed.
and the anticipation.
and of course
the yearn.
for it to never end.

ever.