Maurice Sendak, accepting the 1964 Caldecott Medal for his book Where the Wild Things Are.
“[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate, frustration—all the emotions that are an ordinary part of their lives and that they can perceive only as ungovernable and dangerous forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction.”
“
But if you wait until you feel fully ready
you may never take the leap at all
and Infinity is calling you forth
…Trust that what you carry will sustain you
”
and take the first step out the door.
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, quoted in Velveteen Rabbi’s Haggadah for Pesach
“It helps, at times, to suffer into truth.”
“
Nobody is against empathy. Nonetheless, it’s insufficient. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them. It has become a way to experience the illusion of moral progress without having to do the nasty work of making moral judgments.
…
People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.
…The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict.
”
David Brooks, The Limits of Empathy
“There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don’t want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.” - Albert Camus, in Resistance, Rebellion and Death
I spent most of today researching the extent to which the First Amendment protects the right to sleep or camp in a public park as a form of political protest. I did it to help the people who have taken to the streets and parks to call attention to economic injustice. I also did it because it is what I went to law school to do, to stand in the corner of people, like retired Philadelphia police Captain Ray Lewis, who donned his uniform and took a stand alongside the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators so he could speak his truth to power.
I spent other parts of today watching news reports and videos of police response to Occupy protests nationwide. I saw the photo of a Portland police officer spraying a protestor with pepper spray in the face at close range. I watched the video of police pepper-spraying a group of U.C. Davis students sitting with their arms locked on a sidewalk. And this reminded me of all the things that frustrate me about the law. Because I know that police use of pepper spray on nonviolent protesters engaged in civil disobedience violates the Fourth Amendment. I know it because the Ninth Circuit said so over ten years ago. But police continue to violate the law because it takes time, both from courageous plaintiffs and dedicated lawyers, to see that the law is enforced. And even then, the enforcement is an after-the-fact effort to redress the harm, often by the payment of money, and this is sadly cold comfort to the people who are out there protesting in the streets right now.
I am now spending the remains of the day reflecting on public perception of lawyers, who, perhaps justifiably, are readily identified as part of the one percent, or at least among those who serve the interests of the one percent. Most of the lawyers I know, however, work daily, diligently, constantly fighting unsung battles serving the indigent, the incarcerated, the underprivileged. I am heartened to know them. And this is enough, in the end, to keep me working, and writing, and hoping for a future that is more just.
“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”
Frederick Douglass
“…there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all enemies vanish, —-all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms, all radiant, of beloved persons.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (via Taylor’s FB wall).
“Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present.”
David Mitchell, in Ghostwritten
Today was the last night of Music Fest Northwest. In the last four days, I have been to a least a dozen shows, watching bands rock, sweat, screech and croon. I have been awed by the fierceness, the passion and the pure joy of people putting it all out there in song.
It made me feel, oddly, hopeful. Maybe it is because great songs endure. They transcend politics. They inspire.
Or maybe it is just witnessing so many people creating without much apparent concern for commercialism. Or it could have been watching the enthusiasm of the audience as they shouted, shimmied and swayed—a brief, mass emotional collective.
In short, it rocked.
Day 1 — Saff Hotel in Chinatown, Orchard Road mall megapolis, lost in the Ion Mall, people watching, child acrobats, food hall at Takashimaya — BBQ pork steamed buns, chicken tsukune, bliss — three floors of Forever 21, Ramen Play (indulging Shiloh’s insatiable craving for ramen and curry, or ramen curry).
Day 2 - Fried rice and an egg-laden claypot tofu for breakfast, the Chinatown Complex market (frogs, turtles and unidentified root vegetables), red bean pastries, chicken curry pie, the Tin Tin store, the Chinatown Heritage Center, the Maxwell Street hawker center — chee cheong fun and fried carrot cake — summer rainstorm, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, a quick margarita break at Clark Quay before … more shopping, more ramen.
Day 3 - Amore Street hawker center, kaya toast and kopi oh for breakfast, cool Chinese temple the cab driver told us to check out, double-decker city tour bus, Singapore Flyer (world’s largest ferris wheel), duck tour, Singapore Art Museum video exhibition, tapas lunch, Walter the bunny.
Day 4 - Wangz Hotel in Chinatown, henna tattoo at the Little India Arcade, iced masala tea, Hindu temple with bizarre music, the maze that is the Mustafa Center, water massage machine, vegetarian thosai lunch, thieves market (and the cab driver who told us not to call it that), abandoned by the double-decker tour bus, Arab Street fabrics and perfumes, flower garlands - exhaustion.
Day 5 - Hainanese chicken rice and dumpling soup for breakfast at the Tiong Bahru Hawker Center, shortest hike ever at the reservoir, scary monkeys, boutique shopping, discussions of a change in Shiloh’s hair color, Amore Street Hawker Center curry for dinner.
Day 6 - Chinese Garden and the Live Turtle Museum (pig nose turtles, albino turtles, snapping turtles, lots of other turtles),
Betel Box food tour in Joo Chiat, stuffing bak chang (rice dumplings), cool folks from around the world, chili crab, black pepper crab, claypot chicken, cendol with durian sauce and loads of other dishes — food coma.
Day 7 - Torrential downpour, Universal Studios, Battlestar Galactica human-cylon rollercoasters, Jurassic Park water ride, The Mummy rollercoaster (twice), bizarre WaterWorld show, more ramen at Ramen Play, realization that the past week is probably one of the last times I will get to spend an entire week with Shiloh (sniff).
Day 8 - Marina Bay Sands, mall with a canal and gondoliers, Dietrich back from the States, rooftop lunch, infinity pool in the sky,
parachuters, fireworks, Boat Quay, laser light show.
Day 9 - Buddha Tooth Relic temple museum, queuing for fish soup and lor mee at Amore Street hawker center, collectibles flea market, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at Orchard Cineleisure.
Day 10 - Little India, dosa and masala tea breakfast, more henna, shopping for bangles and bindis, boutique browsing on Haji Lane, fried oysters and chili crab dinner.
— and done. Singapore is a small but fascinating country. What I enjoyed the most, though, was seeing it with Shiloh, my amazing and adventurous daughter, who loves cities almost as much as she loves curry ramen.
