444 words....

A Clutch as a metaphor for living...

There was a time that I swore off cars. I was living in my home town of Columbus, Ohio and George II’s Second -Bush -War -for -Oil was waging and I had been working one of my various stints as a flower delivery driver. In an industry that had so much waste and glutony anyway, I couldn’t also bear or reconcile that I was a part of the problem driving here and there.

All over the northeast side I had been seeing stop signs that someone had cleverly adorned with a “driving” sticker, under the Stop, so that it looked like the sign had been made that way. A way to wake some of us up.

Later working for the Columbus Metropolitan Library I actually met the man who made those stickers. He later moved to Seattle, where ecotopian ways helped him to reconcile . He rode his bicycle everywhere, and really inspired me with his stickers, to quit that delivery job.

I was already an oddball when I first moved back from northern cali to the Westside of Columbus as I rode my royal blue schwinn mountain bike and (for gawd sakes a helmet) everywhere that I could. Besides that, my 1978 vw Transporter van was still in the alley out back, albeit in “pause” mode.

Shortly thereafter, Cota started putting bike racks on all of the buses and in the ensueing 7 years that I lasted on the Hilltop, I saw Columbus become more bike friendly everyday. Y’all who live there now know it’s been called a bicycle-mecca.

Now I am not so free to give up the wheels that get me the 7 miles into the grocery store to buy food for myself, my Dad and my dog.

Now living beings are dependent upon me,yet I find myself wanting to just quit cars again……. On this independence day as I await the eventual outcome effort to raise money for a new toyota clutch on my facebook fundraiser, I pledge an allegience to someday finally being free of the need to own or operate a fossil fuel driven vehicle. But for now I must shift the clutch into neutral and hope for the remainder of the money I need to fix this car to show up.

I pledge to try and be a part of Love, not hate.

I pledge to shift all the way into 5th gear when it comes to taking responsibility for my own experience and allow somehow the other stuff to float on by.

I pledge to fix my yard-sale-find Gary Fisher mountain bike

I am still working on my pledge….

Poetry found on freewill astrolgy....

THE MARVELOUS WOMEN
by Mohja Kahf
All women speak two languages:
the language of men
and the language of silent suffering.
Some women speak a third,
the language of queens.
They are marvelous
and they are my friends.
My friends give me poetry.
If it were not for them
I’d be a seamstress out of work.
They send me their dresses
and I sew together poems,
enormous sails for ocean journeys.
My marvelous friends, these women
who are elegant and fix engines,
who teach gynecology and literacy,
and work in jails and sing and sculpt
and paint the ninety-nine names,
who keep each other’s secrets
and pass on each other’s spirits
like small packets of leavening,
it is from you I fashion poetry.
I scoop up, in handfuls, glittering
sequins that fall from your bodies
as you fall in love, marry, divorce,
get custody, get cats, enter
supreme courts of justice,
argue with God.
You rescuers on galloping steeds
of the weak and the wounded–
Creatures of beauty and passion,
powerful workers in love–
you are the poems.
I am only your stenographer. I am the hungry transcriber
of the conjuring recipes you hoard
in the chests of your great-grandmothers.
My marvelous friends—the women
of brilliance in my life,
who levitate my daughters,
you are a coat of many colors
in silk tie-dye so gossamer
it can be crumpled in one hand.
You houris, you mermaids, swimmers
in dangerous waters, defiers of sharks–
My marvelous friends,
thirsty Hagars and laughing Sarahs,
you eloquent radio Aishas,
Marys drinking the secret
milkshakes of heaven,
slinky Zuleikas of desire,
gay Walladas, Harriets
parting the sea, Esthers in the palace,
Penelopes of patient scheming,
you are the last hope of the shrinking women.
You are the last hand to the fallen knights
You are the only epics left in the world
Come with me, come with poetry
Jump on this wild chariot, hurry–

by Mohja Kahf

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