we breathed text
This morning on the subway, as we approached the last stop, a young woman walked to the back of the car, dropped her copy of one of the free morning papers onto the empty portion of a seat (clearly done with it and unwilling to continue carrying it around), and went to stand by the doors. The man sitting next to the spot where she dropped it, picked up the paper, held it out, and said, "Miss, you dropped this."
She took it and moved to put it back where she'd left it, and he shifted his own position so she couldn't. So she had to carry the paper off the train with her and, presumably, throw it out in one of the designated recycling receptacles on the platform.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that before.
This morning, I have my performance conversation (we don't call them reviews or evaluations anymore, apparently). So the dentist and my period and now my review. The past two days have just been AWESOME.
(They tell me there's such a thing as sarcasm abuse, but I refuse to believe it.)
So while I have been good this week with weaning myself off of that trip to Dunkin Donuts for an iced latte at lunch time (I bring iced coffee from home in the morning), I have a feeling today will require an iced latte and a Boston cream doughnut, even though I don't anticipate hearing anything I don't already know in my review. It's still nerve-wracking!
eta: And, my review conversation has been rescheduled. Sigh. I still want that coffee and doughnut now, though.
Have a poem:
Song of the Third Generation
I learned to read in the dark,
in the car, wherever the light
moved, shifted. My mother believed
I would burn my eyes out.
Between the breath and the text
my birth and hers kept happening
in the late night
in the daily horoscopes
in the 4:30 Movie
and the huge picture books filled with Hollywood stars.
My Ava Gardner died, my mother says.
My mother learned how to read the text of a life
as her mother learned to translate Il Progresso:
by reading a little bit of headline,
any little bit.
They could both predict disasters-my mother's
in American English: divorce, drug addiction
and insane asylums. Nonna's in rich Calabrian dialect:
earthquakes, earthquakes, and food shortages.
Somewhere between our mouths
and what we said is what we learned.
Somewhere in the old country
we breathed text
without knowing how to read.
I learned in the old way too-
in a corner of the kitchen
watching my mother pour the batter
of flour and zucchini blossoms
into bright spattering oil,
or in the cool basement at the edge of the ironing board,
the lint speckling her dark sweater,
at her elbow as she whipped the cloth
beneath the needle of her industrial Singer.
No other record, no other text
exists but the buzzing and this way of learning
in the old way, which is any way
that we can.
~Julia Lisella
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/228556.html.
people have commented there.
She took it and moved to put it back where she'd left it, and he shifted his own position so she couldn't. So she had to carry the paper off the train with her and, presumably, throw it out in one of the designated recycling receptacles on the platform.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that before.
This morning, I have my performance conversation (we don't call them reviews or evaluations anymore, apparently). So the dentist and my period and now my review. The past two days have just been AWESOME.
(They tell me there's such a thing as sarcasm abuse, but I refuse to believe it.)
So while I have been good this week with weaning myself off of that trip to Dunkin Donuts for an iced latte at lunch time (I bring iced coffee from home in the morning), I have a feeling today will require an iced latte and a Boston cream doughnut, even though I don't anticipate hearing anything I don't already know in my review. It's still nerve-wracking!
eta: And, my review conversation has been rescheduled. Sigh. I still want that coffee and doughnut now, though.
Have a poem:
Song of the Third Generation
I learned to read in the dark,
in the car, wherever the light
moved, shifted. My mother believed
I would burn my eyes out.
Between the breath and the text
my birth and hers kept happening
in the late night
in the daily horoscopes
in the 4:30 Movie
and the huge picture books filled with Hollywood stars.
My Ava Gardner died, my mother says.
My mother learned how to read the text of a life
as her mother learned to translate Il Progresso:
by reading a little bit of headline,
any little bit.
They could both predict disasters-my mother's
in American English: divorce, drug addiction
and insane asylums. Nonna's in rich Calabrian dialect:
earthquakes, earthquakes, and food shortages.
Somewhere between our mouths
and what we said is what we learned.
Somewhere in the old country
we breathed text
without knowing how to read.
I learned in the old way too-
in a corner of the kitchen
watching my mother pour the batter
of flour and zucchini blossoms
into bright spattering oil,
or in the cool basement at the edge of the ironing board,
the lint speckling her dark sweater,
at her elbow as she whipped the cloth
beneath the needle of her industrial Singer.
No other record, no other text
exists but the buzzing and this way of learning
in the old way, which is any way
that we can.
~Julia Lisella
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/228556.html.
people have commented there.