Wednesday, June 8, 2016

World Ocean Day

Beach in Izu by Hiroshiga

I think it's World Ocean Day.  I intend to bring Sophie to the ocean more this summer, especially given the fact that the LAUSD has overdone its usual clusterf*^kery and failed to assign her aide for summer school. I'm so incensed by it that I've decided to not send her to summer school after all.  I say incensed but I'm more of a slow burn. Let's face it. Fighting for this is fighting for mediocrity. My capitulation is borne of weariness and resignation but it's got a spark of I don't give a f*^k, too. Sorry for the profanity, but a well-placed IDGAF is healing.  I don't know if it's the benign vertigo, the twenty two years or the dragon's tail that I drag behind me, but I'm not up for the fight. I'm not up for any fights these days which is probably a good thing. Oh, I'm up for fighting for our oceans and expressing gratitude for their great blue expanse. The other day someone posted a Mary Oliver poem about the ocean that I'd never read. Who says that poetry is boring? Here it is, all sexy and dreamy:



From House of Light,
Beacon Press, © 1990.
photos - l: angela russo / r: marisa chrystene


6 comments:

  1. Good GOD but that's beautiful and I have felt the same way so many times, especially when I'm underwater in Cozumel. It is a breathing living world, inches beneath the surface that I feel at home in and also, at the same time, too astounded by to shut my eyes for a moment. Our mother's body, for sure.
    As to the rest of the post- fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck, fuck McFuck. Those are my feelings on the subject.
    I love you.

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  2. I'm guessing Sophie will be way better off picnicking at the beach
    than sitting in a classroom.

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  3. Sometimes not giving a fuck is the victory. I like your summer plan.

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  4. Mary Oliver makes words come alive for me in a way I've never experienced before. I found her poem "The Journey" at a strange/terrible/glorious time in my life and it has become an affirmation. A year ago, at age 46, I had the first two lines of it tattooed (it was my first)on my inner arm! I share this because you also make words come alive, Elizabeth. I know first-hand some of the things of which you write, and I take comfort in the knowledge I do not suffer alone.
    Kris M.

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  5. How is it this is the first time I've seen the acronym "IDGAF?" That can't be right! I imagine it beautifully stitched into a knight's tunic in glittery threads with many flourishes, his hands occupied with margaritas instead of a sword ;) Wishing you a surprisingly wonderful summer <3

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