Friday, February 25, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
More from Anne Frank
"In bed at night as I ponder my many sins and exaggerated shortcomings, I get so confused by the sheer amount of things I have to consider that I have to laugh or cry, depending on my mood. Then I fall asleep with the strange feeling of wanting to be different from what I am or being different from what I want to be, or perhaps of behaving differently from what I am or want to be.
Oh dear, now I'm confusing you too. Forgive me, but I don't like crossing things out, and in these times of scarcity, tossing away a piece of paper is clearly taboo. So I can only advise you not to reread the above passage and to make no attempt to get to the bottom of it, because you'll never find your way out again!
Oh dear, now I'm confusing you too. Forgive me, but I don't like crossing things out, and in these times of scarcity, tossing away a piece of paper is clearly taboo. So I can only advise you not to reread the above passage and to make no attempt to get to the bottom of it, because you'll never find your way out again!
Yours, Anne"
(pg. 72, The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank)
The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank
I'm currently reading The Diary of Anne Frank, as somehow throughout elementary school I was never required to.
"Mother had no choice but to laugh at this ridiculous self-defence, which irritated Mrs. van Daan. Not exactly a born debater, she continued her magnificent account in a mixture of German and Dutch, until she got so tangled up in her own words that she finally rose her chair and was just about the leave the room when her eye fell on me. You should have seen her! As luck would have it, the moment Mrs. van Daan turned around I was shaking my head in a combination of compassion and irony. I wasn't doing it on purpose, but I'd followed her tirade so intently that my reaction was completely involuntary. Mrs van Daan wheeled around and gave me a tongue lashing: hard, Germanic, mean and vulgar, exactly like some fat, red-faced fishwife. It was a joy to behold. If I could draw, I'd like to have sketched her as she was then. She struck me as so comical, that silly little scatterbrain! I've learned one thing: you really only get to know a person after a row. Only then can you judge their true character!
"Mother had no choice but to laugh at this ridiculous self-defence, which irritated Mrs. van Daan. Not exactly a born debater, she continued her magnificent account in a mixture of German and Dutch, until she got so tangled up in her own words that she finally rose her chair and was just about the leave the room when her eye fell on me. You should have seen her! As luck would have it, the moment Mrs. van Daan turned around I was shaking my head in a combination of compassion and irony. I wasn't doing it on purpose, but I'd followed her tirade so intently that my reaction was completely involuntary. Mrs van Daan wheeled around and gave me a tongue lashing: hard, Germanic, mean and vulgar, exactly like some fat, red-faced fishwife. It was a joy to behold. If I could draw, I'd like to have sketched her as she was then. She struck me as so comical, that silly little scatterbrain! I've learned one thing: you really only get to know a person after a row. Only then can you judge their true character!
Yours, Anne"
(pg. 46, The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank)
(pg. 46, The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank)
Clever for a thirteen year old.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
dimples of venus
more notes toward an anatomical theology - dimples of venus
Somewhere out there a man has started thinking about God again. It’s been so long since he’s looked at his wife while she sleeps. It’s been so long he’s always in a hurry to fall into dreaming and breathing and maybe one day not waking again. Tonight, though, it’s very late and she’s already rolled onto her stomach and she’s breathing like a mouse. Her t-shirt is nudging away from her bottom and his thumbs twitch, little mouse twitches, little exhales, little moist breaths. There, peeking now from her shirt, two small dimples, slight indentations—still there after so many years of disregard, of quickly closing his eyes, of untending. Softly then, he sets his thumbs upon them, presses quietly down, like making safe some seeds to flower. He doesn’t imagine God forming her, placing his thumbs on her lower back and gently sending her into the world to bloom—he doesn’t believe in God. But before he rolls over to sleep, he could.
junkmail for blankets
this has successfully changed my feelings towards my dimples.
now embracing them.
Somewhere out there a man has started thinking about God again. It’s been so long since he’s looked at his wife while she sleeps. It’s been so long he’s always in a hurry to fall into dreaming and breathing and maybe one day not waking again. Tonight, though, it’s very late and she’s already rolled onto her stomach and she’s breathing like a mouse. Her t-shirt is nudging away from her bottom and his thumbs twitch, little mouse twitches, little exhales, little moist breaths. There, peeking now from her shirt, two small dimples, slight indentations—still there after so many years of disregard, of quickly closing his eyes, of untending. Softly then, he sets his thumbs upon them, presses quietly down, like making safe some seeds to flower. He doesn’t imagine God forming her, placing his thumbs on her lower back and gently sending her into the world to bloom—he doesn’t believe in God. But before he rolls over to sleep, he could.
junkmail for blankets
this has successfully changed my feelings towards my dimples.
now embracing them.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Books to Read
For further reading section in The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill:
The Golden Spruce, by John Vaillant
The Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank
- The Classic Slave Naratives, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Journal of A Slave Trader (John Newton), 1750-1792; With Newton's Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, edited by Bernard Martin and Mark Spurrell- Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1518-1785 by Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley
-
- The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870, by Hugh Thomas
- The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870, by James W. St. G.Walker
- Any Known Blood
- Some Great Thing
The Golden Spruce, by John Vaillant
The Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank
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