FREE happiness

Feb. 6, 2008
Today the grrls gathered for their public literary action. Carrie made delicious cookies from the heart, Miki passed out free valentines, Morgen did a few stencil sprays, Hannah videotaped, and Ashley recruited passersby to the table with "free hugs." Some City High friends helped out with the act. A fine success! Congrats, grrls.

















Hannah advertises the goods.


















The cookies and the valentines!
















Random acts of kindness....

















Happy women with cookies!

Writing on the Body

On Jan. 9, henna artist Lila Sideras visited the Grrls class. We wrote on our bodies with this magical paste...

Body Language

the stories on the skin and hair
the organs shifting and beating within
who says what?

Kimi Shimmy, A Heroine

She can hover above the ground. She's light. She laughs. But she doesn't look the other way. You can hear her coming. The slight buzz of her wings...and then her whisper, building, the crescendo, the clarity of a song. There's inspiration here. This isn't a sermon. She holds up mirrors--hundreds and thousands of them. Twinkling. "Look at yourselves." Arrows on the mirrors point to the heart. All the hearts. Your heart. "Do no harm." There are dogs on chains. She frees them and lays a soft hand behind their ears. They roll to their backs, full of tongues. There are men staggering between the rows of traffic. She leads them to shelter, waits while they clean up, helps them fill out job applications. Those mirrors. She stops traffic. She pushes out the bicycles. Soon the whole city is riding, the air is grateful, the skies go to blue. She stands in front of the shopping malls, dancing. People watch, fall in love with the mirrors, which show them at home, around the table, making food, conversing, communing, reading, singing, making. The people spin on their heels, forget about shopping, and go home to replicate the scenes they viewed in the mirrors. She does the same. She makes clothing from recycled fabrics, tends her garden, sips tea, writes letters, walks the dogs, reads poetry, makes and takes the love. She throws parties. She leaves love notes. She pushes wheelchairs. She remembers and reminds. She smiles. She's light. She laughs.

Exactly from The Body

(Footnotes by Jenny Boully, The Body)

You come at me like the wind. You chap my lips. You leave me gasping. I can lean into you and not fall over. This is not exactly comforting. Exact-o-knife, you. 19 Wither, please. Dissolve into a breeze. An inaudible exhale. There is comfort in this softness. I can get things done inside of it. I can wear lip gloss. I can go about my business. I can find cracks in the pavement. La-di-da. I can watch the woodpeckers peck at indelibly hard surfaces. It takes years to bore through metal with a beak. Or so I’ve heard. But maybe it's worth it. After all, microscopic creatures live everywhere. As in: food is everywhere. It’s not geography, but the governments that dictate otherwise. Why else would they stockpile mounds of corn to ship across oceans? No wind is strong enough to push that freight. These decisions feel too heavy for the likes of us. We’re dusty. We just flutter. That is the goal, at least. To flutter of our own accord. Not that I don't want to take responsibility. I just want to take less. Of everything.

My independence has waned. I look for the gust. I look for you. Is this my fate? You? 20 You mess up my part. I forget my lines. I sit stewing. This is not a successful recipe. For stew or cornbread or even the perfect quesadilla.

I am looking now for a metal shed with lots of glass to let in light. I could glow in there and flutter of my own accord.

Next door could be Jack 21, just down from his busy-body beanstalk. I could listen to his typewriter and imagine the poems. He’d be punching in something about gold, I’m guessing. Or seeds. When in doubt write a poem that contains the word “seeds.” It’s hopeful, at least. And then you can invite the wind. And it won’t have to be exact. It can whisper or burst and the little seeds can dart around like gnats. The sky becomes soil. The birds are grounded. Their beaks pecking and pecking in their prescribed search. It’s not unpleasant. It’s not frantic. No one is breathing down their thin-boned feather necks. Not you, certainly. You leave the birds alone. You leave me alone. I’m here in my metal shack, Jack next door. We’re making things up. It’s working. We’ll be doing this until midnight, at least. Or until the clouds come to make it seem so.


________
19 Cf. Delmore Schwartz:

Disturb me, compel me. It is not true
That “no man is happy,” but that is not
The sense which guides you. If we are
Unfinished (we are, unless hope is a bad dream),
You are exact. You tug my sleeve
Before I speak, with a shadow’s friendship,
And I remember that we who move
Are moved by clouds that darken midnight.

20 Obviously action on a tidbit from Nietzsche: The Danger in Happiness. — “Everything now turns out best for me. I now love every fate: —“who would like to be my fate?” (Apophthegms and Interludes, No. 103).

21 Most likely an allusion to an actual person, as during this phase, it was common practice to place fantastical persons in actual situations or actual persons in fantastical situations.