Because she does

The bed roll is rectangular, perfect, filled with a mixture of water fowl feathers and synthetic fill. When I remove the soft duvet to wash it, I find each corner has an anchoring point where the duvet has been tied to the downy quilt. A human had to tie each, the reverse operation of what I do, untying each.

In China a woman like me sews and ties

Sews and ties comfort

And I feel fragile

Because she does.

Revelation 21

Revelation 21:1 KJV

[1] And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

The whole world just a shotgun shack with the big fig tree in the backyard. We used to swing there on the old swing set, first for just us children, then the one even old people could sit in.

So clear in my mind

What passed away meant to you, meant to me, its euphemistic weight gone with all the passings, you, then grandpa, then dad

Passed away you would say then, whereas now there are no euphemisms, no ways of hiding

What the new looks like

All filled with glory.

ScarJo wha?

Dear Scarlett Johansson,

Would you please 1. Read Woody Allen’s Wikipedia page 2. Comment on the number of time he has trucked out the trope of the teenage ingénue in his films and private life 3. Tell us more about how you assess his sexual relationships with these teenage girls (real and thinly fictional) and then

Ask yourself how old was Dylan when she was dragged into a rape story? Would you want that for your daughter? Would anyone?

Believe is a strong word.

With lasting consequences.

Solomon

Ecclesiastes 4:1-2 KJV

[1] So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. [2] Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.

I generally chafe at the wisdom of Solomon. I want to measure my “wise guys” by their lives–faithfulness, sobriety, compassion. S-man seems to fall abysmally short on all categories.

When I read this verse from Ecclesiastes it resonates with my own sense of the fragility and tenuousness of life, but then I cannot help that Solomon had so many powers the ordinary dude did not have to:

Stop oppression

Comfort the bereaved

And use his power as a monarch to generally improve his culture

He had the power to live a different life, to show a different way. I am no king, but I will be judged by how much better or worse I use my power

To change things.