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14 march 2003

currently reading

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, by John DeGraaf (and others). The most engaging book you'll read (and use!) toward leading a more sustainably simple lifestyle. It'll make you want to drop the Joneses like a hot rock.

Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, by Greg Critzer. If you read one nonfiction book this year, read this one. Read it to your kids, for your kids, for your loved ones. Learn how America has gradually widened over the past thirty years, thanks to corporate behavior that is utterly criminal, and America's "right" to have it all, all the time. An engaging, alarming, and thought-provoking discussion of the biology and sociology of being big, fat Americans.

making plans to run away from the home

When I am an old woman,
I will not wear purple.
Just a pair of thigh-high orthopedic boots
And a tattoo across my belly that says,
“Bingo sucks.”

I will leave this world as I entered it:
Bare.
I will not allow my life
And the marks it has left on me
To wither unused in a high-collared attic.

I will walk downtown as if the sidewalk owes me something
And you will see what breasts look like
When they are put to good use
Softened by sex
And hunger.

I will not walk gently into that good night,
But run joyfully into the shocking daylight.
When the police run after me,
I will not allow them to resist arrest
As they dart their eyes everywhere
But into my eyes
And onto my skin.

“We don’t want to arrest you, ma’am.”
Oh, but I want you to.
I want those cuffs around my wrists
And my hands against the car.
I want everyone who passes to stop
Wonder what I was like when I was younger
And think me oddly erotic.
I want them to wonder
About their own grandparents
The old ladies at church
And what makes them shout in the darkness.

I want the onlookers to see
That my flesh has been pressed by loving hands
That my cheeks are rosy with his attention
That his breath in my ear is not a relic, but reality
For this old gal.

I want him to fight his way through the melee
Wearing nothing but his boots
And a tattoo across his belly that says,
“Please Seat Yourself”.

When I am an old woman
I will remind you
That I am still a woman.
The sun will set, shine its deep colors onto my skin
And dress me in purple.