Mother's Day is May 9.

I wonder if my mother has a blender.
If so, I could buy her a Smoothie recipe book.
(Tofutti smoothies are the best!)

Erik gave me wild flowers today.

The March for Women's Lives happened in Washington today. I heard all about it as I graded English compositions and listened to NPR. Ann Richards said some things, as did Gloria Steinem and Hilary Clinton. The New York Times had great coverage and a cool video on RealPlayer.

Check it out:
www.nytimes.com

I'm watching a bio about Uma Thurman on E.
Movies she's made (not in chronological order:)

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Henry and June
3. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
4. Beautiful Girls
5. Dangerous Liasions
6. Final Analysis
7. Kill Bill
8. Gattica
9. Batman and Robin
10. The Avengers
11. Hysterical Blindness

"How did Uma get to be so cool?" I ask Xiaonan.

"She uses the gifts that god gave her; she's beautiful, she has a great personality, and she's unique," she said.

Uma became the spokesmodel for Lancome. "They have great mascara," Xiaonan tells me. I become inordinately jealous and buy six strawberry Panda licorices.

***

I went to see Ken's reading at The Ann Arbor Book Fair. He read from his book Big Enigmas. The last poem he read was called "Why We Should Invade Iraq"--
an anti-war poem. It made me think how much more complex human life is than the simple surface we see everyday.

Director Wolfgang Peterson has a new movie in the works:
Troy. I love this director, who also made The Neverending Story.
I just watched the trailer for Troy on the internet. Impressive.

High winds tonight. Ali Farka Toure. (I have not yet acquired Nora Jones' new album.) Anil's Ghost by M. Ondaatje (181):

A scarf tied around her head holds the earphones to her.
She needs music to push her into extremities of grace.
She wants grace, and it happens here only on these mornings or after a late-
afternoon downpour--when the air is light and cool, when there is also the
danger of skidding on the wet leaves. It feels as if she could eject herself
out of her body like an arrow.

Sarath sees her from the dining room window. He watches a person he has
never seen. A druid in moonlight, a thief in oil. This is not the Anil he knows.
Just as she, in this state, is invisible to herself, though it is the state she longs for.
Not a moth in a man's club. Not the carrier and weigher of bones--she needs that
side of herself too, just as she likes herself as a lover. But now it is herself dancing
to a furious love song that can drum out loss, 'Coming In from the Cold,' dancing the
rhetoric of a lover's parting with all of herself. She thinks she is most sane about
love when she chooses damning gestures against him, against herself, against
them together, against eros the bittersweet, consumed and then spat out in the
last stages of their love story. Her weeping comes easy. It is for her in this state
no more than sweat, no more than a cut foot she earns during the dance, and she
will not stop for any of these, just as she would not change herself for a lover's howl
or sweet grin, then or anymore.

She stops when she is exhausted and can hardly move. She will crouch and lean there,
lie on the stone. A leaf will come down. Its click of applause. The music continues
furious like blood moving for a few minutes in a dead man. She lies under the sound
and witnesses her brain coming back, lighting its candle in the dark. And breathes in
and breathes out and breathes in and breathes out.

*****

A sublime passage. Lovely words/thoughts. I wish I had written them.

Top Twenty Things to See On a Jog To Gallup Park in Ann Arbor, Michigan

1. Daffodils by dooryards blooming and the bluest flowers
2. Basketball players playing with their barbecues
3. Middle-aged women walking yorkshire terriers with ribbons on
4. Half-naked roller-bladers in pink shirts, white shirts, yellow shirts, and blue shorts
5. A man hiding underneath the bridge of Huron Parkway playing peekaboo
6. Russian guys speaking russian on rollerblades
7. Ducks and geese and swans all a-scurry
8. Santa Clauses wearing Oakley sunglasses on bicycles
9. Little kids playing in the stone fish water fountain (water not turned on)
10. Black sports bras, red shorts, waterproof sports watches, and caps
11. Couples leisurely strolling in the park
12. Children fishing off the banks of the Huron
13. People driving home from work in their cars on Fuller
14. Runners breathing through their noses
15. A girl my age in the bathroom dousing herself with water because she's so hot!
16. Runners with strollers the size of Buicks!
17. Runners in groups wearing headphones
18. Little kids on swings and jungle-gyms
19. Cars (I almost wrote Czars) driving by blasting Outkast
20. Basketball players running behind me, eating my shorts!

I went to see Anne Carson's staged reading
of her play called Decreation at the Media Union
at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor last night, Good Friday.

I'm glad for Professor Carson
that she was able to experience
her creation in the flesh--it's rare that artists are able to experience
the public's reaction to their work while they are alive.

I'm fortunate to have been able to meet her
and wish I could write the proper homage to her now.
All I can say is thank you from the bottom of my heart
for sharing yourself with the difficult world.

See Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne:

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/titian_ext.html

And Matisse's Snail at The Tate:

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=9396

A Few of My Favorite Places

I wonder how the weather in the Black Forest is this time of year--
I see that Bob Dylan is visiting Venice.
I've often wondered about Cabo San Lucas--
I have some long-lost relatives in County Sligo, Ireland--
There are some friends in Taipei, as well as Canberra, Austrailia--
I'm sure the people of Cameroon would be happy to see me--
Do you think I would like the gypsies of Bucharest?
Would I swoon in ecstasy over the ceramic tiles of Tangiers?
Would I be able to resist the temptation of absinthe in Prague?
Could I simply relax in Ibiza? Or Cannes? Or Seville?
I don't like vodka so St. Petersburg is out.
And I don't like revolutions so Tianamen Square is probably a bad idea too.
I do like angel hair pasta, frescos, and Da Vinci so Florence sounds good.
As does Milan, Venedig, and Italy's countryside. The Napa valley might be nice too.
I don't like to hide all the time so the Middle East is out.
And I don't like to dress up all the time so Paris is out.
I do like to eat lots of fish--including scallops, salmon, lobster, clams, mussels, prongs
and swordfish so Dubrovnik might work.
I've never been to New Zealand before and I'm sure it's lovely since that's where they filmed Lord of the Rings...
Did I already miss Karnival in Brazil? The movie Black Orpheus was filmed there.
I like to waltz so Vienna would be fun. I could talk to Freud's ghost.
There's Munich of course that I love for the heavenly music.
I've never been to Korea. Either of them. But I did flirt with the idea of Seoul once.
Stratford would have been nice. I could have bought my Spanish cousin Jane a
pearly velvet gown--just like the fur of the velveteen rabbit I had as a little girl
that matched my Louie VIII amethyst shawl.

Here. This will make you happy. A poem by American Poet, Marianne Moore:

No Swan So Fine

"No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles." No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chintz china one with fawn-
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.

Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth
candelabrum-tree of cockscomb-
tinted buttons, dahlias,
sea urchins, and everlastings,
it perches on the branching foam
of polished sculptured
flowers - at ease and tall. The king is dead.

A registered self.--J.K.

Pratitya Samutpada:
Everything is interconnected;
if you do this to that
this happens.

Please don't hurt her anymore.