Haesong Kwon - "Thank God for Hard Feelings"

The life of a garment worker in midtown Manhattan.

She worked as seamstress in the sweatshops of New York City.

Whose mother is not the love of their life?

She pushed her lunch on co-workers

from Russia, Togo, Haiti, Dominican Republic.

They disliked the sugar fried anchovies.

They saw the nimbus on each fish

and politely or raucously declined. The cavernous

spaces of her mind. Having studied graphic design

at Duksung Women’s College, Dobong-gu, Seoul,

what else was she going to do but write a novel.

Staring at sea windows, she scrawled and chalked

in her head. Drong of eternal absence. An expert

on the social history of the Staten Island Ferry,

she confided in me the act of crying was a privilege.

What type of person leaves a near full can of

coconut water on the bleachers? You have to be

happy in order to weep, or sob. I can teach you,

she said to me. If you can hold a pencil, I can teach you

how to draw. But I’ve known people who have

no hands. Who have no fingers.

Robert Frost - "The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no steps had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost, from Mountain Interval

Happy Bloomsday

“…If he had smiled why would he have smiled?

To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone, whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.”

- James Joyce, from Ulysses

June 15th, Thomas Merton

I saw the country in a light that we usually do not see: the low-slanting rays picked out the foliage of the trees and high-lighted a new wheatfield against the dark curtain of woods on the knobs, which were in shadow.

It was very beautiful. Deep peace. Sheep on the slopes behind the sheep barn. The new trellises in the novitiate garden leaning and sagging under a hill of roses. A cardinal singing suddenly in the walnut tree, and piles of fragrant logs all around the woodshed waiting to be cut in bad weather.

I looked at all this in great tranquility, with my soul and spirit quiet. For me, landscape seems to be important for contemplation. Anyway, I have no scruples about loving it. Didn’t Saint John of the Cross hide himself in a room up in a church tower, where there was one small window through which he could look out at the country?

- Thomas Merton, from The Sign of Jonas

The Parable of the Sower - from The Gospel of Luke, 8:4-16

And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable:

A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.

And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture.

And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it.

And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried,

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be?

And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.

Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.

They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.

And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.

But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.

No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light.