from the lesley gore “lives they lived” (i have basically 8 saved drafts about different folks from this issue, don’t want to deluge anyone, but glenn ford? amelia boynton robinson? god-DAMN):
That first hit [lesley gore’s song], ‘‘It’s My Party,’’ lasted just 2 minutes 21 seconds, and still the phrase came at us more than a dozen times, each one, it seemed, with a little more mustard: ‘‘I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to.’’
After learning that he had terminal cancer early this year, Oliver Sacks (b. 1933), a neurologist and the author of books like ‘‘Awakenings’’ and ‘‘An Anthropologist on Mars,’’ published an essay about it in The Times. ‘‘When people die, they cannot be replaced,’’ he wrote. ‘‘They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.”
Elizabeth Fink with Attica clients in 1991. Credit Photograph by Larry Fink. Courtesy of the NY Times.
going through “the lives they lived” — just learning about elizabeth fink and the attica uprising and her work with the survivors (bolding my own):
Afterward, Big Black [Attica Brothers Legal Defense executive director Frank Smith] was beaten and tortured for six hours. He was forced to lie naked on a table while vengeful law-enforcement officers insulted him with racial slurs, hit his genitals and burned him with cigarettes. They put a football beneath his chin and told him that if he let it drop, he would be killed. He recalled that day in the 2001 documentary ‘‘Ghosts of Attica,’’ saying that for years he wept whenever he tried to talk about it — that what he felt most was ‘‘disappointment in the world, disappointment in people.’’
Scores of other inmates experienced similar torment. Men were stripped, beaten, sodomized, forced to crawl over glass. Hearing their stories, Elizabeth Fink began to understand something about disappointment in the world. It couldn’t be reversed, but possibly it could be countered. Ditching her two-week plan, she ultimately became lead counsel for a $2.8 billion civil suit filed in 1974 against the State of New York on behalf of more than 1,200 victims of Attica. She then worked on the case for the next 26 years.
but one bright amazing thing:
At her [Fink’s] apartment in Brooklyn, where she lived alone with her dog, she read mystery novels, smoked pot and played jazz extra loud.
today my therapist said that life is reparative. it struck me. and just read this about bobbi kristina brown, daughter of musicians bobby brown and whitney houston:
She also wanted to act and make music. Made of stars, maybe she, too, contained something astral.
i spend a lot of time in the car driving to houston or austin and back to marfa and because i’m half insomniac, half narcoleptic, i always have to pull over and take naps, or alternately get 2 sugar free red bulls [it happens], or gas station coffee, and if it’s coffee, i’m always tempted by these little creamers. they are straight up gross — and yet.
“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.
i know i’m early on this but i am ready to kick 2015 to the damn CURB. it wasn’t terrible and i’m blessed and able to enjoy daily joys and i’m listening to this right now, but overall, 2015 was a rocky road. hysterectomy jammed the whole thing, like a weird year of stupid grieving, like truly, STUPID grieving, as i was on the fence about having kids ANYWAY, but there’s something about not having a choice that just stings. also going back to work after having worked so hard to quit, and being tentatively hopeful about the new scenario, but still feeling like a piece of charred wood — just was bad all the way around. having to press up against the knowledge that i was too burnt felt like a stubbornness on my part, which made me feel worse, so burnt PLUS guilty PLUS hopeless, let’s be honest, a bad combination. there were good things that came out of the extra work year (meeting laura and sarah; switching ballroom’s site to shopify!!!! i’m still thrilled about this, because i am a deep true nerd; the incredible steve earle playing for ballroom; taking mike simonetti to the el paso airport airport; health insurance), but you know, when you are burnt, you are burnt, and that may be the end of the story (maybe it’s not the end of the story for some but for me it was). but i’m ready for a new era. mariah, take me out please.
just straight lovin theg bloop holiday gift guide. first i love when people say “don’t tread on me,” especially in relation to alcohol. second, one time carolyn and i joked about getting a limo to pick me up at the austin airport and that i should then drive around alone in said limo drinking hennessy. 2016 resolution: drink more hennessy:
You’re a fool if you’re paying airline prices for the shitty “cocktails” they serve on board. Carry on cocktail is the only way to live life. If only Obama would keep his campaign promise to make a henny version of this. TSA tried to give me problems because I was carrying 7 of these bad boys on a recent flight [do you know how far Hawaii is?] but THANK GOODNESS YA GIRL IS WOKE ENOUGH TO KNOW IT’S YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO CARRY AS MANY LIQUIDS AS YOU WANT AS LONG AS THEY’RE UNDER 3.4 OUNCES. Don’t tread on me. I know my rights. PS how much do you want to bet Jenna will include henny in her list?