Sunday, July 27, 2008

Conversations from my life

Me: I really really really need to pack.
My boss: I don't want to hear about it.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

You know

sometimes I get really fed up with my apparent inability to take people at their word and trust that they'll follow through. I actually have some really good reasons, since I've gotten burned hella. And usually when I do rely on other people, it doesn't go very well. But at the same time, sometimes I wish I could just take people at their word. It would be a lot more emotionally healthy and I would save myself a lot of worrying time that could be devoted to be something else.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Conversations from a non-profit

Vietnamese American coworker (setting other Vietnamese coworker up on a date): He drives a BMW, he works at Boeing....
Vietnamese American coworker 2: But is he interested in social justice?

Friday, July 11, 2008

Full Fathom Five

by Silvia Plath

Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-

Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long

Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives

The old myth of origins
Unimaginable. You float near
As keeled ice-mountains

Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:

Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form suffers
Some strange injury

And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors

Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,

For the archaic trenched lines
Of your grained face shed time in runnels:
Ages beat like rains

On the unbeaten channels
Of the ocean. Such sage humor and
Durance are whirlpools

To make away with the ground-
Work of the earth and the sky's ridgepole.
Waist down, you may wind

One labyrinthine tangle
To root deep among knuckles, shinbones,
Skulls. Inscrutable,

Below shoulders not once
Seen by any man who kept his head,
You defy questions;

You defy other godhood.
I walk dry on your kingdom's border
Exiled to no good.

Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.