The wind is howling.
From the South.
Change comes tomorrow.
Temperatures falling.
Temperatures rising.
Affect more the top
than the bottom
of the building.
Affect more the bottom
than the top
of the open spaces.
You can’t hear it.
When it’s next to you,
The wind.
Only if there’s a hole.
Or if you move into it.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Friday, June 22, 2018
Never Stop
I had a hiatus in reading while I was walking. I was writing.
I had a hiatus in writing while I was recovering. I was reading.
I have just watched Christina Rickardsson’s Ted Talk and felt anew a moment of gratitude for my life, the lottery that I've won (to use her words). Her book is even more powerful. Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World found its way to me via Amazon and algorithms. Its title intrigued me and her life in two different countries (one neighboring) made me want to know her story.
Christina, born as Christiana in Brazil, shares her memoir with courage. I have had glimpses of life in the street, but in googling "favela" and reading her story, a door opened into poverty the likes I have been blessed not to know. She writes that as she looked for food she was called a rat and wondered whether it was better to be noticed or ignored. "Being totally ignored was like not existing at all, as if you weren't a human among other humans." (p. 64)
In parallel with news events, I've been thinking a lot about this thought. We should not be looking away from the things that are hard to see, and as she reminds us, we should take actions to help where we can.
The book walks us not only from her journey from jungle cave to favela to orphanage to Sweden (yes, you read that correctly) but also her return back to Brazil in 2015.
Never Stop Walking is not an easy read but I would love to see it on as many reading lists as possible with the hopes that someone who has no idea what it's like to have everything taken away could have a window into empathy, into kindness and into love for a neighbor. "We never know our strength until life tests us. But most of all, we don't know what strength and power another person has until we follow them for a while on their journey." (p. 199)
I had a hiatus in writing while I was recovering. I was reading.
I have just watched Christina Rickardsson’s Ted Talk and felt anew a moment of gratitude for my life, the lottery that I've won (to use her words). Her book is even more powerful. Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World found its way to me via Amazon and algorithms. Its title intrigued me and her life in two different countries (one neighboring) made me want to know her story.
Christina, born as Christiana in Brazil, shares her memoir with courage. I have had glimpses of life in the street, but in googling "favela" and reading her story, a door opened into poverty the likes I have been blessed not to know. She writes that as she looked for food she was called a rat and wondered whether it was better to be noticed or ignored. "Being totally ignored was like not existing at all, as if you weren't a human among other humans." (p. 64)
In parallel with news events, I've been thinking a lot about this thought. We should not be looking away from the things that are hard to see, and as she reminds us, we should take actions to help where we can.
The book walks us not only from her journey from jungle cave to favela to orphanage to Sweden (yes, you read that correctly) but also her return back to Brazil in 2015.
Never Stop Walking is not an easy read but I would love to see it on as many reading lists as possible with the hopes that someone who has no idea what it's like to have everything taken away could have a window into empathy, into kindness and into love for a neighbor. "We never know our strength until life tests us. But most of all, we don't know what strength and power another person has until we follow them for a while on their journey." (p. 199)
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