Motley Kamuka

“But as you swung away, who was the woman alone in the earth, planted up to her shoulders in the aardvark hole, a gazing head rooted to the desert plane, with an upsweep of mountains far behind her, darkly folded, far away in the evening? She can feel the incredible pressure, miles of horizontal sand and clay, against her belly. Down the trail wait the luminous ghosts of her four stillborn children, fat worms lying with no chances of comfort among the wild onions, one by one, crying for milk more sacred than what is tasted and blessed in the village calabashes. In preterite line they have pointed her here, to be in touch with Earth's gift for genesis. The woman feels power flood in through every gate: a river between her thighs, light leaping at the ends of fingers and toes. It is sure and nourishing as sleep. It is a warmth. The more the daylight fades, the further she submits to the dark, to the descent of water from the air. She is a seed in the Earth. The holy aardvark has dug ...

I'm seeing a lot of article about the connection to nose picking and Alzheimer's.  Now I have anxiety when I touch my nose. Joking is a way to cope with anxiety. What have you been picking your nose too much? I get it that comedians feel cramped about being able to joke around. I think of it like chess, but so many moves are errors. You can’t joke about dementia. I think. Articles: Mouse Study Suggests an Unexpected Link Between Nose-Picking And Alzheimer's ( Science Alert ) Nose Picking May Increase Dementia Risk ( Psychiatrist.com ) Medical News Today

I love the subject of ethics, and I would love to teach a class on the ethics of The 100, a TV show that ran from 2014-2020. I've only watched the show, haven't read the books (a rare admission for me).  This is going to be an ongoing thoughts, and edits, I'll update on my latest rewatch. 1. Many are killed because the strict laws need to be enforced on the satellite called the Ark. They think they are the last of humanity. It creates many resentments among the people to have parents murdered for breaking the law, and those resentments cause them to do things that strike back at the leaders who made those decisions. Jaha's son is murdered because of this.  Murder is never justified? There's lots of murder in this show. If culling the people is necessary for the survival of some, that could be explored as a group, not imposed on the people. Jaha's mistake was the idea that they couldn't come to a peaceful solution. They did. Now it's fiction and what if n...

I hate the internets desire to boil things down and get the best desk chair, the best zen retreat, the best bohn mi. You can't just aim for all peak experiences, you have to muck through life and kiss the joys as they go by. Even so, I found myself enjoying this process. I'm concerned less and less with being objective, and just want to express my subjective truth.  1. Star Wars: New Hope  (1977). When this film burst onto the scene, it was so good, there have been 11 more films, and 6 more are in planning, with 4 amazing shows: Boba Fett, Mandalorian, Andor and Obi Wan, and countless animation spinoffs. It's hard to not feel how fresh the first one is. It's 28th on IMDB, but I'm watching it 46 years later, after countless watches, and I still really love it. That people spoof this movie and that it's had such a cultural impact is amazing. It created the force. The friendship between C3PO and R2D2. 2. Seven Samurai (1954). Number 20 on IMDB, but I love it in my ...

Listening to Aida , the Verdi opera, I wondered what indigenous music was from the country Ethiopia. Then I find Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. "Emahoy’s music can be difficult for critics to categorize. It’s occasionally (and somewhat inexplicably) described as blues or jazz (a radio documentary once referred to her as “the Honky Tonk Nun”), though it is more clearly informed by the Western classical canon and ancient liturgical chants. Mostly, her playing evokes the delicacy and grace of early spring: a sparrow alighting on a branch, a wildflower bending toward the sun, a tiny, persistent sorrow. It’s the sort of thing—soothing, meditative, elegant—that immediately softens everyone who hears it." (Amanda Petrusich) Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (1923 – 2023) was an Ethiopian nun who composed music. She was born in an  Amhara family. She studied abroad in Switzerland, returned home in 1924. In 1933 she was invited to play for the emperor, Haile Selassie , at his palace, befo...

I have a red curtain, so the photo from the book has a reddishness to it. The Little Prince came out in 1943 in April. The Little Prince became the world's most translated non-religious book (into 300 languages) together with Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyon France in 1900, and died in the Mediterranean Sea in 1944. He was writer, poet, journalist and pioneering aviator. In the article The Strange Triumph of “The Little Prince” by Adam Gopnik in New Yorker , Gopnik's summary of the book follows: "an aviator, downed in the desert and facing long odds of survival, encounters a strange young person, neither man nor really boy, who, it emerges over time, has travelled from his solitary home on a distant asteroid, where he lives alone with a single rose. The rose has made him so miserable that, in torment, he has taken advantage of a flock of birds to convey him to other planets. He is instructed by a wise if cautious fox,...

I just felt relief at Trump being held accountable, not joy at triumphing over the opposition, because I believe in a democracy two political urges are in a dialectic, and even though my political perspective is on one side of the spectrum, I believe in the dialectic and democracy.  There is no cult of personality around politicians for me, they're pretty boring workers trying the best they can. Policy, building consensus and communication aren't that exciting.  (This is a librarian in Canada who I follow on Twitter , I like her t-shirt which I take to be about the Trump years, and our current times. Not her opinion necessarily, but I think she is left leaning. I thought to cut her head off, so it wasn't about her, but I like her face and graying hair.) Tighter gun control will just save lives, it's that simple. The pendulum has swung too far around gun control, and we need to save lives, and have a few wackos feel trampled on. Global warming must be addressed.  Nixon r...