sometimes you wake up with a start.  it's 8:30pm you're a hot slug on a bare bed and you have no idea how long you slept.  sometimes that happens to you.  and so the stupor is something you know about also.

this week has no hard edges.  it's all a soft and steamy forward blur of work in humid kitchens, pineapple sheets, dusky porches.  life goes on and i'm a participant somehow.  but i can't help but feel that parts of me linger in the past like ghosts.

these are the things groggy slugs say and it's not necessary to translate sluggish to english.  the slugs would rather you didn't.

i have a ramekin of cherry tomato jewels on my desk at work.  i collect the treasure each morning before i come in, scanning each plant and cooing sweetly to it as i pluck it's ruby babies.  i'm hoarding them for i know not what, but whatever it is, is going to be good.  i had a similar ramekin last week, except not so full and i came in monday morning to find it empty except with little curled green tomato scalps to witness of the carnage.

last night i watched a 4 part documentary show on netflix called the girls of destiny.  it was very good.  it's about these children from the lowest caste--the untouchables, in india, who get picked to go to a school.  this school is the work of an indo-american who sold his company to a fortune 500 and used the money to start this school.  his dream is to end poverty.  he takes one child from a family at age 4 and keeps them in his school for 14 years.  they go home twice a year for holidays, but other than that they are at the school and they attempt to give them the best education and a good loving environment and character building too, and to get them into good colleges and into good professions and in this way each child is supposed to raise up their family and give back to hopefully 100 others and so raise the people eventually out of poverty.  they follow around 4 girls on their journey as they deal with being different from their siblings and home villages, and the pressures of getting good grades and choosing wisely to be the saviors to their families and their communities and also trying to be true to themselves, and leaving the safety of their school to be in the outside world and facing prejudice about being an untouchable etc.  it was very compelling.  i watched all four episodes one after another of course.  the suffering of the peoples of the world can feel so overwhelming.  thinking about all the different people who suffer can be a flood of despair.  i'm so grateful to know about the people and organizations that attempt to heal save and rescue.  sitting here on my safe cozy porch in a privileged safe and free country, with all the opportunities i allow myself to have--i'm grateful.  and i want to be a part of movements like that.  i want to be a part.