For the mediaeval serf, movement wasn’t an option unless your Lord moved you. If you didn’t like how your feudal master behaved, you could not vote with your feet. You had to stay where you were put, and live and work there your whole life. You could be moved of course if you were marched into a war, but you wouldn’t get any say in that, either.

These days we don’t need permission from Barons and Counts to move around – at least not within the countries of our birth. We generally need permission to move country, and countries want to control who can move where. Young, qualified, able bodied people are more welcome than others. The rich are always welcome to move and the poor are discouraged. Unless we need them for something. Plenty of industrial projects have been built on the backs of very poor workers. From the…

I know the sun is coming for us
I saw it try to mellow out
over the horizon
when we prodded at him
in a daze
remember herren means boy
and dammen means girl
that is my only advice
while I lay under your tiny
body
trying to recollect
piece together a
whatever this
is
when love and loss
merge in some sort of
coughing motion
like expelling
but inhaling
im not sure
I am sure but
if I could give you a gift
I think it would be
relevance
the power of always
I don’t think you are weak
please never think
you are weak
I think you are pure
like the last row of curtains
over a stage
or perhaps a low ley
moon phase
washing over
a tide,
I’m not certain..

– sheila cordova
for Naya, you know why and when.

Like most people (I suspect) I was brought up knowing that there were rules about eating food. One of the rules was not to run your finger round the plate afterwards. Nor should a person sneak out to the kitchen and carefully run their fingers around bowls, saucepans etc.

I grant you that it doesn’t look charming, and ups the risk of getting food on clothes. But at the same time, it’s a manners system that tells us it is preferable to waste food by washing it down the sink, rather than run a finger round the pot and eat what’s there.

Every morsel of food out there exists as a direct consequence of the death of a living being, except perhaps for milk and eggs, where the death of living beings is indirect, but still part of the equation. Anything that had seeds in tends to be the death…

such shadows come and fall on me
from joy to sorrow, like a switch
i fight to turn the light back on
i don’t know where the joy has gone

a single note in some old song
a word not said
a thought unwise
i try to see where i went wrong

the tender sweetness
on a breeze
can turn my heart
and make me freeze

and then i go and sit a while
and lean against a steady tree
and wait to smile again
and see

like the earth we reach for warmth
and the thirsty kiss of rain
all things in nature
are the same

it’s all a mirror of ourselves
dimmed and scratched
things unclear
and things not seen

this constant flow
of dark and light
is just the deep souls day and night
and the turning of the year