Rescued!
Lost
in a tunnel
of dark thought.
Transformed
by the magic
woven by a child
smiling
at his own
divinity.
My own smile
unveiled
by his light.
Rescued!
A Poem (and a Photograph)
Reply
Author Archives: Jesus Maria Alvarez
When I Look At Manhattan. . .
From a work in progress currently titled From Mountain Road to Easy Street, a brief passage:
I walked towards my neighborhood up the Fourteenth Street Viaduct, its steep angle rising towards Union City matching the increasing elevating effect the pot had on my mood, as I walked on. When I reached the traffic light at the top of the bridge I turned around to look at the island of Manhattan below me, the live version of a black and white photograph from the nineteen fifties, taken around the time I was born, pressed into my memory. The skyline had grown new skyscrapers since I had arrived, like the newer trees in a jungle, they had sprouted, changing the outline but the basic premise remained. She was lit up from the edge of the water to the highest penthouse, permanently awake, as alluring still as the first time I had seen her. On this night, my existence, with all of the unconquerable problems it owned, was dwarfed by the magnitude of the man-made landscape before me. . .
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I took the photos of the New York skyline on the slideshow above over the last few years. These are just a few of the hundreds of images I’ve taken since arriving in Hudson County, New Jersey, in 1970. It’s impossible to ignore the view when you’re on this side of the Hudson. To some of us who, as kids, imagined living here, it’s the physical manifestation of dreams realized.
Worth Repeating
From Lapham’s Quarterly via the great Maria Popova:
Your mother and I have been a complete failure financially but if the boys turn out to be good and useful citizens nothing else matters and we know this is happening so why not be jubilant?
–LeRoy Pollock in a 1928 letter to his 16-year-old son Jackson.
The rest of the letter is here, and this is the book where it can be found: American Letters 1927-1947: Jackson Pollock & Family.
Please consider subscribing to Ms. Popova’s Brain Pickings, a very enjoyable and informative site. And “If you find any joy and value in it, please consider a modest donation. Brain Pickings remains ad-free and takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit, between the site, the newsletter and Twitter.”
Another Self-Publishing Success Story
From the Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, a story that makes people like me salivate:
I spent years shopping my novel to publishers and agents; after reaching the end of my patience I dumped the book into the Kindle Bookstore expecting only my mother to buy it.
I did no marketing. Somehow (I’m still not quite sure how) the word spread.
Miguel Endara’s HERO
Wislawa Szymborska’s Parable
I read today of Ms. Szymborska’s passing at age 88 in Krakow, Poland. As a tribute, I repost this entry from August 2011.
I have a book of her poetry, given to me by my poet daughter, that I treasure. It’s one of only four books that I keep in a special place: on top of my toilet. I keep it there so that I could read it often. I’m sure Ms. Szymborska would be OK with that.
Godspeed, dear poet! Poland and the rest of the world will miss you — but we have your poems. . .
Some fishermen pulled a bottle from the deep. In it was a scrap of paper, on which were written the words: “Someone, save me! Here I am. The ocean has cast me up on a desert island. I am standing on the shore waiting for help. Hurry. Here I am!”
“There is no date. Surely it is too late by now. The bottle could have been floating in the sea a long time,” said the first fisherman.
“And the place is not indicated. We do not even know which ocean,” said the second fisherman.
“It is neither too late nor too far. The island called Here is everywhere,” said the third fisherman.
They all felt uneasy. A silence fell. So it is with universal truths.
Wislawa Szymborska, From Sól (Salt) 1962
You Found Me
and I thank Grace for that. . .
A Classic Film Scene, Revisited
A perfect way to end a Sunday (or start the work week). H/t Sully and his famed MHB‘s.
ooh aah from ant1mat3rie on Vimeo.
Uh-oh, Ritalin Is Not The Answer?
I’ve been married to two women who had been diagnosed with A.D.D. One of them dealt with the symptoms by taking a small (prescribed) dosage of Ritalin. A couple of other members of my extended family have also relied on either Ritalin or Adderall over the years to better manage their focusing difficulties.
The symptoms of ADHD include inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity. These are traits that most children display at some point or another. But to establish a diagnosis of ADHD, sometimes referred to as ADD, the symptoms should be inappropriate for the child’s age.
and also this:
Toddlers and preschoolers with ADHD tend to be constantly in motion, jumping on furniture, and having difficulty participating in sedentary group activities. For instance, they may have trouble listening to a story.
School-age children display similar behavior but with less frequency. They are unable to remain seated, squirm a lot, fidget, or talk excessively.
In today’s New York Times, L. Alan Sroufe professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, cautions about the practice of prescribing Ritalin and Adderall as a long-term solution to deal with A.D.D. in children and young adults in a sobering reassessment:
THREE million children in this country take drugs for problems in focusing. Toward the end of last year, many of their parents were deeply alarmed because there was a shortage of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that they considered absolutely essential to their children’s functioning.
But are these drugs really helping children? Should we really keep expanding the number of prescriptions filled?
In 30 years there has been a twentyfold increase in the consumption of drugs for attention-deficit disorder.
As a psychologist who has been studying the development of troubled children for more than 40 years, I believe we should be asking why we rely so heavily on these drugs.
My son has shown some of the same symptoms associated with A.D.D. He is too young to be formally diagnosed, since some of these are common to most young children. Until now, I feared that medication was the inevitable solution. Now, I’m not so sure. There may not be a magic cure. That may not be that bad.
The rest of the Times opinion piece is here.
A Book’s Second Act
From TreeHugger:
Even if electronic readers do usurp the reign of the paper-based book, low-tech tomes can still live on as art. We’ve seen them carved into breathtaking landscapes, recycled as lighting, and even reincarnated as fairytale haute couture, but for Swiss artist Valérie Buess, books are tentacled sea organisms that she brings to life by hand.
(c) Valérie Buess
