[5211] in Central_America
New quotes for Wed Dec 1
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Central America)
Wed Dec 1 04:25:54 1993
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 04:25:04 -0500
From: Central America <root@charon.MIT.EDU>
To: ca-mtg@charon.MIT.EDU
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belville (Sharon Belville):
The pun o' the day is:
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," said Tom rhetorically.
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dkk (David K Krikorian):
Why is it so bad to wait five weeks to deposit a check?
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jtidwell (Jenifer P. Tidwell):
where do we go from here?
humanity is being ravaged by a disease
doctors are powerless against it
pollution is everywhere
men and women die daily in senseless ethnic conflicts
homelessness is rampant
people can't read
children are dying in the streets
the year is 1350
it was the beginning of the Renaissance
they made it
so will we
- from a United Way poster
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kdmiller (Kenneth D Miller):
void main(){char b[17];int a=0,c=0,d; /* / for a good time, email: \ */
while(c!=-1){printf("%07x0:",a++);for /* ( kdmiller@athena.mit.edu ) */
(d=0;d<16;d++){c=getchar();b[d]=(c<' ' /* \ (Kenneth D. Miller III) / */
||c>'~')?'.':c;printf( "%s%02x",d&3?"":" ",c&255);}printf(" | %s\n",b);}}
Yes!! I'm online! Just use 'kdmiller@m4-035-19'...
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nocturne (Eric Mumpower):
{from system: This user's .plan file is not world-readable}
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rei (Cynic):
Four Rules of Ki Aikido:
1. Keep One Point
2. Relax Completely
3. Keep Weight Underside
4. Extend Ki
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sorokin (Jessie Stickgold-Sarah):
Martha
by Audre Lorde
I.
Martha this is a catalog of days
passing before you looked again.
Someday you shall browse and order them
at will or in your necessities.
I have taken a house at the Jersey shore
this summer. It is not my house.
Today the lightning bugs began.
On the first day you were dead.
With each breath your face
fell in like crumpled muslin.
We scraped together smashed images of flesh
preparing a memory. No words.
No words.
On the eight day you startled the doctors
speaking from your death place
to reassure us you were still trying.
Martha these are replacement days
should you ever need them
given
for those you once demanded
and never found.
May this trip be rewarding.
No one can fault you again Martha
for answering necessity too well.
May the gods who honor hard work
keep this second coming
free from that lack of choice
which hindered your first journey
to this Tarot house.
The doctors said
no hope no dreaming
accept this case of flesh for evidence
of life without fire
wrapped you in an electric blanket
kept ten degrees below life.
Fetal hands curled inward
upon a bed so cold
bruises could not appear.
On the second day I knew you were alive
the gray flesh of your face
suffered.
I love you and cannot feel you less than Martha
I love you and cannot split this shaved head
from Martha's pushy straightness
asking in a smash of mixed symbols
(How long must I wander
(in this final house of my father?)
On the Solstice I was in Providence.
You know this town we visited your friends here.
It rained in Providence on the Solstice
we passed through twice
on route 6 through Providence to the Cape
where we spent our second summer
trying for peace or equity.
It always seemed to be raining
by the time we got to Providence.
The Kirschenbaums live in Providence
and Blossom and Barry.
And Frances. And Frances.
Martha I am in love again.
Listen, Frances, I said on the Solstice
our summer has started
today we are witches with enough energy
to move the mountain back.
Think of Martha.
Back in my hideous city
I saw you today. Your hair has grown
your armpits are scented
by some fastidious attendant.
(testing testing testing)
explosive syllables warning me
(the mountain has fallen into dung)
no Martha remember remember Martha
warning (dead flowers
(will not come to your bed again.)
The sun has started south
our season is over.
Today you opened your eyes
they give
a blue-filmed history to your mangled words
help me understand how
you are teaching yourself to learn
again.
(I need you need me
(Je suis Martha I do not speak french kissing
(OH WOW! Black and...Black and...beautiful?
(Black and becoming
(somebpdy else maybe Erica maybe)
who sat in the fourth row
behind us in high school
but I never took French with you Martha
and who is this Madame Erudite
who is not me?
I found you today in a womb full of patients
blue-robed in various convalescences.
You eyes are closed you are propped
into a wheelchair, cornered, a parody of resting.
The bright glue of tragedy plasters all eyes
to a television set in the opposite corner
where a man is dying
step by step
in the american ritual going.
Someone has covered you
for this first public appearance
in a hospital gown, the badge of your next step.
Evocative voices flow from the set
horror is think in this room
full of broken and mending receptions.
But no one has told you what it's all about Martha
someone has shot another Kennedy
and we are drifting closer to what you predicted
your darkness is indeed speaking
Robert Kennedy is dying Martha
not you not you not you
he has a bullet in his brain Martha
But surgery was never considered for you
since there was no place to start
and no one intended to run you down on a highway
being driven home at 7:30 on a low summer evening
I gave a reading in Harlem that night
and who shall we try for this shaven head now
in the courts of heart Martha
where his murder is televised over and over
with residuals
they have caught the man who shot Robert Kennedy
another one of difficult journeys--
he has a bullet in his brain Martha
and much less of a chance than you.
On the first day of July you warned me again
(the threads are broken)
you darkened into explosive angers
refused to open your eyes, humming interference
your thoughts are not over Martha
they are you their task is
to remember Martha
we can help with the other
the mechanics of blood and bone
and you cut through the pain of my words
to warn me again
(testing testing whoever passes
(must tear out their hearing aids for the duration.)
I hear you explainin Neal
(my husband whoever must give me a present
(he has to give me
(himself where I can find him for
(where can he look for himself
(in the mirror I am making
(or over my bed where the window
(is locked into battle with a wall?)
Now I sit in New Jersey
with lighting bugs and mosquitoes
typing and thinking of you.
Tonight you started seizures
a temporary relapse
but this lake is far away Martha
and I sit unquiet in New Jersey
thinking of you.
I Ching the Book of Changes
says I am impertinent to ask of you obliquely
but I have no direct question
only need.
When I cast an oracle today
it spoke of the Abysmal again
very difficult but promising
in it water finds its own level, flowing
out from the lowest point.
I cast another one that cautioned
the superior man to seek his trength
only in its own season.
Martha what did we learn from our brief season
when the summer grackles rang in my walls?
one and one is too late now
you journey through darkness alone
leafless I sit far from my present house
and the grackles' voices are dying
we shall love each other here if ever at all.
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starflt (Derrick Kong):
191. Send smutty birthday cards to your in-laws.
192. Open umbrellas in crowded hallways.
193. Announce when you're going to the bathroom.
194. Read over people's shoulders on the bus.
195. Hold out until the other guy gives in.
196. Ignore deadlines.
197. Revenge is sweet; get some.
198. Borrow money from your mother-in-law.
199. When it says, "Reserved Parking," that meant you.
200. Pad your expense account.
from Life's Little Destruction Book
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therese (Therese):
Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. it is reached when
a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else
in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.
...But a man who is truly humble cannot despair, because in the humble
man there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.
- Thomas Merton
--- End of Central America ---
