delicious luxury

waking to rain on a Saturday morning when I don't have to be anywhere. Snuggling down, feeling the warmth and security of a roof over me, a bed under me, walls around me, duvets wrapping me. Listening to the rain, the different sounds it makes on roof, on leaves, against windows. Imagining the sky, soft grey melting into wetness.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

A friend persuaded me to see this film with her yesterday. I wanted to, and didn't. Wanted to, because Ken Loach is brilliant, and his films are necessary and true and beautiful. Didn't want to because they are also gut-wrenching and heartbreaking and grim.

This one was no exception. What I hadn't expected was to see so clearly, so strongly, the parallels between British rule in Ireland and British imperialism in Kenya, in the rest of the British Empire. To hear the Irish nationalists make the connection:

"If the English give us full independence, they'll have every colony from Jamaica to Africa, clamoring for the same!"

Also unexpected was the way the scenes evoked, so powerfully, the present-day atrocities of Israeli occupation in Palestine. The same realities of soldiers pounding down streets, raiding homes and businesses, beating, torturing, killing at will, terrorizing a civilian population to force them to give up the whereabouts of the resistance fighters. I wonder if this film will screen in Israel. And if Israeli audiences will be able to see the brutalities of their state's actions reflected in the story.

Finally, most wrenching of all, the betrayals and splits in the IRA after the treaty with Britain, that kept Northern Ireland a colony. Again, evoking the way newly-independent, post-colonial African governments betrayed the ideals of the freedom struggles.

this lit up my morning

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal

by Naomi Shihab Nye

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,

I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.
I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?
The minute she heard any words she knew -- however poorly used -
She stopped crying.
She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get there, just late,
Who is picking you up? Let's call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her -- southwest.
She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.
Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.
Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.
She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag --
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookies.
And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers --
Non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American -- ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.
And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were holding hands --
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,
With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped
---has seemed apprehensive about any other person.
They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.
Not everything is lost.

reading

Jeanette Winterson's small novel, Weight. It's based on the myth of Atlas, greek character sentenced to hold up the world on his shoulders. It's not really gripping me the way other Winterson writing has. But there are gem-like sentences, buried among the pages:

"There are two facts all children need to disprove sooner or later; Mother and Father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your parents, it is difficult to construct an narrative of your own."

"Straightforward is not the geometry of space. In space, nothing tends directly; matter and matter of fact both warp under light."

"There are stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true."