 The following are snip-its from my Journal For August 2022.
#JournalBits #MahmoudDarwish.
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 Salman Rushdie The way this had had been going I cold certainly imagine that it could take a turn for the worse. Then this news. Salman Rushdie was making an appearance in New York today to give a talk on the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers. The irony is that in 1989 Rushdie was living under a death threat issued by the government of Iran. Suzanne Nossel, an officer of Pen America, that is dedicated to promoting the expression, said "we can think of no comparable incident of a public attack on a literary writer on American Soil."
At this writing he is on a ventilator and cannot presently talk. He was stabbed in the neck and about the abdomen. It is said he will likely lose one eye, nerves in one arm were severed, and his lived was damaged by the stabbing. The attacker is in custody. No word yet on motive. Rushdie spend several years hiding in seclusion in London, but decided he could no longer live a life hiding and on the run. I am sickened by this event and the many instances of writers being silenced, imprisoned or killed due to their work. Pen America is an organization that has been fighting to empower writers, many who are within boarders where they are not truly safe. There are more and more instances of them being jailed, sentenced to death, or having to live in exile. Mood today: #sad not the best of days.  People are not turtles. We don't carry our homes on our backs. The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has written extensively of exile and absence. They carry through his poetry and other written work like an artery pulsating with the very essence of these themes.
Exile is a subject that has spoken to me for several years now. I feel a great kinship wit exile. Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that I am in exile in the severe context of a person banished from his or her homeland and unable to return, but I have learned that we can truly feel separated from things, places, people, etc. in ways that create profound sadness, anxiety, longing, etc. Maybe it is a childhood home, maybe an old neighborhood, a dear friend, a way of life, A favorite home as an adult. These things can all impact us in profound ways that create a longing. There is a little known Welsh word that has no literal English word. "Hiraeth" in a broad context refers to some blend of the emotions longing, homesickness, nostalgia. It could include the missing of a time, and era, a person, and it is layered with many feelings. Often it is related to something you can never go back to. As such, the emotional tug strings to the word run deep. I believe that most people have some connection to the feeling of exile at some time in their life. In my personal experience it has been a dominant feeling that I have had for quite some time. In his book, "In the Presence of Absence" Darwish speaks to my heart in so many ways. "I only hate hatred, because it poisons one's capacity to love simple things." "You said to me: If i die before you do, protect me from canned words that have exceeded their expiration date from the moment the speaker stood at a podium." "You said: "I used to invent love when it was necessary. When I walked alone on the riverbank. Or whenever the level of salt would rise in my body, I would invent the river." Darwish seems to rely on his inventiveness, his creative mind to propel himself through these emotional struggles that come with absence and feeling of loneliness. "You ask: What is the meaning of refugee? They will say one who is uprooted from his homeland." "You will ask: What is the meaning of homeland? They will say, The house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the beehive, the smell of bread and the first sky". "You ask: Can a word of eight letters be big enough for all these, yet too small for us?" "You have a splendid dream that precedes poetry and a sea call that precedes rhythm As if tonight were the private rendezvous between creator and created: Be the master of your attributes now My son, you have a dream Follow it with the. night given to you! And be one of the dream's attributes Dream and you will find paradise in place." MAHMOUD DARWISH (1941-2008) was born in Galilee, Palestine and became a refugee at age 7 He worked as a journalist and editor for Haifa. Left for Moscow to study in 1970. His exile journey took him to Beirut, Tunis, Cairo, Paris, Amman, and Ramallah. Darwish's works include 30 books, and his poetry has been translated into 35 languages. #MahmoudDarwish #Poet #Refugee #exile #hiraeth #  Periodically I become interested in just how much international attention my web site gets. Maybe it's a nerdy thing to do, but so what. It isn't hurting anyone. It's not criminal. just a curiosity, so indulge me, please.
Looking at the most recent report of visitors to my site I find that it has been visited mostly. by people in the US, but this is not surprising to me. Here is the breakdown of the most frequent visits after that: Country
What strikes me as interesting is that outside the United States, there is a greater interest from Asian countries. Looking at Cities: Cities
These Stats are as of today's date. 8-01-22 #VisitorStats #MichaelWellsWebSite  [NOTE - this is an incomplete entry of some of my journal notes from this month.]
#JournalNotes #School #Writing #frustration  I'm tired tonight, but I don't anticipate sleeping well. I feel like one too many balls got past me today, and the important one, the one I needed to stop, the one that so much was dependent on, I didn't stop it. Not only did I not stop it but I failed to communicate on the topic. I failed to convey the possibility that existed that might have made another person's day much better than it likely was. Maybe I brought that on myself trying to two several things at once, but I should have known a person of importance was in a delicate spirit. As the afternoon grew later I lost control of any conversation on the subject. Summer Redstone, who was probably a billionaire, said of frustration, "Success is not built on Success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes it is built on catastrophe." I guess Ii rather like what Kurt Vonnegut said about frustration... "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh since there is less cleaning to do afterward." So is it a good thing or a bad thing that I became frustrated? I guess it can be both. The writer tells me to laugh it off. The billionaire tells me to see it as a positive challenge. At least that is my interoperation. Still, I set here with a long night ahead of me and work to do, including some rewrite on an essay and a "grind" poem to write. I can laugh, I suppose. My leaning is to cry, in part because I am crying for another. Laughing right this moment is not going to help that person at all. Taylor Swift has the following take on frustration... "Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it's on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you've got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration." . Anthony Banderas... "Expectation is the mother of all frustration." I don't know that I feel any less frustrated, But I feel it's okay to cry and I'll probably be up late LOL #Mood #SlightlyLessFrustrated #TryingToStopTheBalls Kansas City is the home for a lot of art and culture, and one of my favorite examples. of this are the shuttlecocks on the lawn of the Nelson Art Gallery. They are fun because you don't see these large instillations of art just anywhere.  They have been here if I am not mistaken since my high school days. They are fun any time of year. People will pose with them in snow white winter landscape as well as bright green summer grass. The culture of. are here in Kansas City thrives. There are a lot of cities that people naturally think of as artsy communities. San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Chicago, LA, Cleveland often come to mind. But Kansas City started making that list a few years ago and is becoming more recognized as a center for Arts and Culture. From daring architectural designs, to The Galleries, The Arts District and The Kemper Center for Preforming Arts. There is no reason. for Kansas City to not hold its head high for the role of arts in our community. And where Literary Arts are concerned, do not forget about the Kansas City Writers Place that has been a part of this community for many years. #KCArts #NelsonGallery #WritersPlace. #KemperCenterFor PreformingArts  |
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