The soil’s rich
As black and dank as it gets in these parts
It’s the digging that’s getting me
down
It’s that feeling, you know
When your arms ache
And you’re wiping your forehead
So thick the dripping sweat
It’s blinding me, you think
It’s blinding me and so even if I find the thing
I won’t see it I won’t recognize it
Because the two are different you know
It’s why the ants don’t scatter at the sight of us
We’re too big
We’re right there in front of them
But that’s not always enough
Well it’s like that, I’m telling you
I’ve been here
All day
For months
Years now
My whole damn life
And I’m telling you
There’s no bottom to this thing
It’s a mistake
Thinking you’re emptying out to an end
Look around
Look around
If death was the answer
We’d have stopped looking a long time ago
Welcome to The ALIVE hour.
Illustration: Shannon Colon
Featuring Robyn Riley + Chloe Riley. Music: Chloe Riley
Things found in real life
Your letters / other ways of interacting which look like this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
Things found on the internet
This section from this profile of writer Lois Lowry. (She’s talking about the death of her son, how it stays with her still):
When he died, a friend of mine who was a Shakespearean actor sent me a quotation from “Macbeth.” In the play, Macduff gets the news that his wife and children have been killed, and he becomes inconsolable and incoherent. Another character says to him, “Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” And I think that’s true. I think it’s something that literature does, that writing does, that speaking about things does. It keeps our hearts from breaking.
This thought on letter-writing from writer Jami Attenberg:
Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime. I do not mourn the death of the printed letter in a snobby, East Coast, patrician way—“Where have our manners gone?”—but because I love objects, I love paper, and I love something that I can hold to my chest for a moment.
This quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who passed away Dec. 26 at the age of 90:
All I long for is a society that would be compassionate. A society that would be sharing. A society that would be caring. Now you can say to me, and I will admit it, that we have not seen an incarnation of that kind of society, the kind that you talk about. But we are ministers, we leave it to others to try to put flesh onto the dreams that we try to dream . . .
The ALIVE hour